Labour market oriented Vocational Education and Training

Location

Republic of Croatia

Duration

2006 - 2011

Donor

GTZ

Budget

2.010.883 EURO

Description and Deliverables

The program is intended to strengthen the capability of the project partners to gear vocational education and training towards the needs of economy and youth, in accordance with the drafts for the European Qualification Framework (EDF). The project provides methodical, technical and financial support to the improvement of the general framework of reform processes, the establishment and promotion of selected regional excellence schools, the institutional and staff development of participating social partners as well as the introduction of target group oriented and gender specific pre-vocational and vocational guidance to support integration of VET graduates into the labour market.

The project partners will benefit from these efforts on several levels. On the macro level, the Ministry of Economy, Labour and Entrepreneurship (MoELE) clarifies and supports the framework for a harmonised reform of the three-year vocational education by establishing a task force and improving the stakeholder dialog between state, private sector and trade unions. In this framework, a optimisation concept and an implementation strategy including a gender-differentiated monitoring and evaluation concept will be developed. On the meso-level, chambers of commerce, selected enterprises and schools will participate in the development and implementation of labour market oriented education and training programmes. On the micro-level, schools in cooperation with enterprises will establish high quality and practice oriented training and education courses and improve the efficiency of these courses for the labour market through target group oriented pre-vocational and vocational guidance and counselling.

The direct result of the project will be that vocational education and training services will comply with the need of small and medium enterprises. Vocational education and training meeting demand will increase the employability of graduates. Properly qualified graduates will enhance the efficiency of labour as a factor of productivity and will thus improve the competitiveness of companies. As an indirect benefit, the availability of qualified human resources will also increase Croatia’s attractiveness as a production location. With this, conditions for economic growth, more employment and broad economic participation of the population will improve.

Components of support are

Advice to governmental and private institutions concerned with vocational education and training, by long term and international short term experts
Technical, methodological and management competence training of professional and managerial staff of these institutions
Implementation of pilot measures

Deliverables:

Supporting the MoELE to identify quantitative and qualitative bottlenecks in the VET system,
Supporting the MoELE to further develop selected vocational schools to regional excellence centres as well as to establish and promote these excellence centres
Implementation of qualification needs analyses with a focus on vocations for small and medium handicraft enterprises
Advancement and development of occupational profiles, curricula, training and teaching material, quality assurance systems for vocational education;
Contribution to the establishment of new or enhanced practice oriented training and education courses for the excellence centres in co-operation with social partners, relevant institutions, bodies as well as regional economy
Introduction of target group oriented and gender specific pre-vocational and vocational guidance to support integration of VET graduates
Implementation of the new and enhanced practice oriented training and education courses
Qualification of teachers, trainers and education managers and staff of the MoELE and of social partners
Testing of alternatives to in-service education in regions with a considerable lack of providers of in-service education
Survey of opportunities for co-operation with the economy (PPP) in the framework of the project and support to their implementation