Open Space

Annual Eastern Partnership Regional Forum on work-based learning in VET,
21 and 28 October 2020, online
Work-based learning (WBL) is a key priority in VET policies of the European Union, its Member States and in many ETF partner countries. Improving work-based learning in VET is considered one of the key strategies to improve youth employment and employability, to better match VET provision with skills needs of companies and to improve overall relevance and attractiveness of VET.
The outcomes of several ETF initiatives confirmed the high value of networking and peer learning between partner countries in the region. It also showed the benefit of sharing information between stakeholders in view of policy development and implementation of work-based learning in the countries.
In this perspective, the ETF supports the policy dialogue with the countries in the region through the organisation of Annual Regional Forums for WBL in VET. In 2020 Regional Forum is organised by the
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ETF under Eastern Partnership Platform 4 “Mobility and People-to-People contacts”. Given continuing pandemic situation, this year the event will be delivered in online format. Therefore, the programme has been adjusted to the online format and will include fewer sessions, as compared to the traditional ETF WBL Forum.
During the period since the last Forum in October 2019 the countries continued to work on the implementation of their strategies to improve WBL and some important developments took place, including strategic, legal, organisational, experimentations. Some interesting experiences and models arose from the necessity to adapt provision of training to the conditions of lockdown. The Annual Forum aims to capture and share these recent developments, including good practices and lessons learnt and to look in the future.
Forum objectives:
1. To share information on progress in the development of WBL and good practices in six countries of Eastern Partnership since the last Forum, from October 2019 until October 2020. In particular:
▪ new strategies or update on implementation of on-going strategies, new mechanisms, legislation, regulations;
▪ new experimentations and pilots;
▪ new large donor programmes to support VET and how they address the issues of work-based learning or update on implementation of on-going projects;
▪ how COVID pandemic influenced organisation of WBL: has it been postponed? Has some of it been provided online? To share successful practices and lessons learnt.
2. To identify common challenges and to discuss how to respond to them;
3. To reflect and discuss on future steps in WBL development, identify priorities for the next year 2021.

Thank you Jan Kalenda for an interesting blog. I like the way that you show how research has built on the seminal piece by Fuller and Unwin so that we understand what concrete actions might 'expand' the learning environment. That said - as Siria points out - there is often a tension of purpose or priority. Managers may, understandably, prioritise the objectives of production or service delivery over the objectives of learning, I wonder what research tells us about approaches to balancing these goals - short, medium and long term?

Thank you Marcela, I also see an important role here for formative assessment. As response to Covid19 we also started a specific strand on (formative) assessment within the ETF which will be integrated in CNL as well. It will be really interesting to combine both next year! It looks like there are many opportunities to explore to make learning more engaging and inclusive.

I hope you translate this into English

. L'accès au Tableau de Bord interactif dans lequel sont visualisées les variables telles qu'élaborées à ce jour est disponible pour votre information et utilisation: https://public.tableau.com/profile/tabulaex#!/vizhome/ETF-BigDataLMI-Tu….

71% of workers in EU companies have skills matching their job requirements; 16% on average are overskilled, while 13% are underskilled.
https://twitter.com/eurofound/status/1316295243654987776?s=20