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Social Partnership

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Social partnerships are forms of collaboration where social partners work with VET actors at the national, regional or local level to constantly improve the alignment between VET and the skills needs in the labour market. To this end, they engage in and contribute to dialogue on VET policy and provision. The social partners are organisations that represent the interests of employers or employees. They include trade unions and employer federations, as well as chambers of commerce and business associations which represent the interests of their members in specific sectors or regions. The partnerships themselves are often tripartite in nature. They not only involve social partners and VET institutions, but actors from government and public administration at the national or sub-national level with an interest in issues such as local growth, job-creation or entrepreneurial development.

The need to work with social partners often emerges in the course of developing a national plan for VET reform, ideally as part of a vision building and road mapping process such as that presented in the area 2 of the VET Governance Toolkit, where forging such partnerships is seen as a way to address issues such as persistent skill gaps or difficulties that employers may have in finding suitably skilled graduates. At the time of creating the roadmap or action plan, further work is inevitably required to understand the available options for social partnerships and embark on the path towards establishing them, beginning with pilots, for example, and working up to wider adoption based on the experience gained.

The formal Review of Institutional Arrangements can be of great assistance in starting down this path. These can help in assessing the capability of the system to engage social partners in systematic and purposeful dialogue on issues such as VET policy in relation to training courses, curricula and qualifications, occupational standards and the need for active labour market measures. Contributing to policy-related dialogue demands a great deal from social partners, and dedicated capacity-building measures may also be required. The ETF has therefore developed a framework for capacity building for use by social partners to support them in developing the capacity of their members at the individual level. The contribution of social partners is not limited to participation in dialogue and the provision of advice. It can also include inputs into VET financing or the provision of access to resources, such as equipment or advanced training facilities, and opportunities for work-based learning. Many of these contributions are based on the use of public-private partnerships (PPPs).

The ETF has developed a range of tools to help partner countries understand the need for social partnerships. These include a position paper which explains the importance of cooperation with social partners in the design, delivery and financing of VET services. In addition, the policy brief summarises who the social partners are, why they need to be involved in VET, what form their involvement should take, and what decision makers can do to improve their participation.

The Public-Private Partnerships offers a thematic overview of the types of stable collaborations to co-design, co-finance and co-produce endeavours of common interest whose outcomes are beneficial for the learners. The ETF Yearbook consists of essays on key issues related to social partnership, and  provides a vision of how these may evolve in future to remain relevant in a global knowledge economy.

The section ‘In practice’ illustrates the application of social partnership in VET. The Sectoral Skills Councils are stable formal structures that play a role in skills needs assessment and anticipation. A policy brief illustrates the basic ideas whereas case studies refer to AzerbaijanKyrgyzstan and Moldova. In the piloting of Sectoral Skills Councils in Belarus, the immediate goal was the development of occupational standards and a framework for sectoral qualifications for the IT and Managerial Services sectors. It furthermore provides reports on the application of tools for skills needs analysis to the ICT sector in the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina in Serbia, as well as a study on the construction sector in the Ukrainian city of Lviv.  A further means of support is provided by a report on the status of, and context for developing, VET-related social partnerships in countries of the Southern and Eastern Mediterranean, namely Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Syria, the Palestinian Occupied Territories and Tunisia.

Comments (8)

Oliver Deasy
Open Space Member

In the ETF partner countries, very little empirical evidence to suggest that real sustainable Social Partnerships have made a meaningful contribution to VET development. Maybe it's time to replace Social Partnerships with Policy Dialogue. In today's world we have two types of leadership, transformation leadership at the policy level and operational leadership at the policy implementation level. Social partnerships makes a contribution at the operational level, but at the policy leadership level, evidence suggest the leader and the followers. There are some pockets of SP spikes, but they fizzle out over time.

Siria Taurelli
Open Space Member

Public and private stakeholder cooperation in VET has been growing in the 2010s in the ETF partner countries. A strong motivation for the private sector to engage in VET has been the mismatch between the skills that VET systems provide and the demands in the labour market, according to Torino Process analyses these years.

Where social partners are active (and with them professional organisations, chambers, youth and teacher associations, etc.) VET attains better results. However, the institutionalisation of the many examples of social partnership in VET is proving difficult. This is in particular the case in countries where the tradition of social dialogue is more recent, is absent or has been disrupted.

How to look at the future?

Leadership is surely among the relevant factors that can bring advance. However, are the partnerships that create a favourable terrain to the sustainability of outcomes. Trust between institutions and between actors is key, hence in my view leader-follower relationship alone is not going to suffice in the long-term.

Building dialogue and partnership in VET requires some investment in institutional innovation: there is no necessity to replicate the same institutional solutions that work in other countries. Action-learning, tolerance for failures, non-financial incentives such as recognising to social partners the status of interlocutors, and financial incentives where useful are important too.

Vincent McBride
Open Space Member

yes true, but oliver has a point, social partnership has a mixed record..there is scope for reflecting on sustainability.. there is an impression of some improvements in some countries. what a makes it effective and what are the alternatives? ETF is updating its governance inventory this year - let's look at this further.

Oliver Deasy
Open Space Member

SP at the policy level or transformation leadership level needs a legal base, otherwise the power balance is with Government's who finance 100% of TVET in most countries. In EU, member States there are mechanisms through which the social partners make a contribution by way of training funds/levies/taxes, This results in a right to have say in policy. However, where the social partners have no legal based or power base as equal partners - then SP is dead from the start. The challenge is how to create a binding and functioning legal base for POLICY DIALOGUE at the policy level. Other partnership agreements are much more practical at the operational level such as skills councils, school boards, etc.

At Governance level we need to move to a framework with a legal base for policy dialogue to enhance effective participatory policy making.

Siria Taurelli
Open Space Member

Well said, Oliver. You highlight the levels of social dialogue: the policy level, which requires a legal basis; the operational level where various partnerships are activated to implement relevant aspects of VET.

In a functioning social dialogue at policy level, social partners "have legal and power base" as you say, they have legitimacy and can negotiate with the government. The practice of VET shows that this status at policy level is a facilitator of partnerships at operational level.

Oliver Deasy
Open Space Member

Ah....... - Siria - wondering about the term "Social Dialogue" why not call it what it is "Policy Dialogue" which represents a wider audience than just the traditional social partners.

Siria Taurelli
Open Space Member

I see your point Oliver - policy dialogue is an umbrella term, it is a dimension of social dialogue but it applies to many other situations: dialogue between institutions, between countries, between countries and supra-national organisations etc. Policy dialogue alone does not suffice to clarify what is what and requires additional explanations.

Social dialogue and partnership processes in VET involve other actors: true. It is one of the “lessons from the transition” that are summarised in this note (pages 2-3): https://openspace.etf.europa.eu/pages/engaging-private-sector-skills-de…

The issue I see in this discussion is that social dialogue in VET may be shaped differently in different countries, and by a variety of actors. Yet to serve its purpose in all countries and contexts it requires capacity, mechanisms, learning from practice and inter-institutional trust.

Aram Avagyan
Open Space Member

Of course the terminology is important – Social Partnership (SP), Social Dialogue (SD) or Policy Dialogue (PD) – but we should appreciate that the meaning of those terms may permanently evolve. From a certain point of view, the Social Dialogue can be considered as a component of Social Partnership. The dialogue, which is mainly about the policy, usually precedes and very often also accompanies partnership at the operational level.

In the context of dialogue, “policy”, may be understood at different levels: from national VET Strategy development, vision-building or mission-defining, to policy “sub-levels”, such as VET provision types and forms (e.g. dual VET vs traditional VET); access to VET; content of VET and QA, etc. So, the policy and the operations are “inextricably interwoven”. Furthermore, Policy Dialogue can be a component/type of the Social Dialogue. In simple words, the social partners may dialog about the VET policy or about operational aspects.

Proper SP, SD or PD should serve the following main purpose: to constantly improve the VET system and keep it fitting the purpose, when all parties – the students, who are tomorrow’s workers; the employers with their demand of skilled workers; and even the governments with their social, economic and political ambitions – benefit from that. However, those parties should clearly see the possible benefits, accompanied with necessary tools for contributing and influencing, be it at policy or operational level.

There are many good examples from a number of partner countries, where SP and/or SD are rather effective both at policy and operational levels. This is, however, a topic of another discussion. But unfortunately, there are many failures, too, specifically when political will or motivation is missing. The latter is, I think, what Oliver means.


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