Social Partnership in Education and Training, Phase 2

Location

Uzbekistan

Duration

2007 - 2009

Donor

EuropeAid

Budget

1.064.130 EURO

Description and Deliverables

The overall objective of the project is to contribute to promoting mechanisms and practices of social partnership in education and training as a means to improve its quality and relevance. The purpose is to develop capacity at national, regional and local levels for designing and implementing vocational education and training (VET) policy, for involving stakeholders and in particular social partners, and for improving the link of VET to the needs of employers, youth and adults.
The project combines policy development and capacity building in vocational education and training. It involves all levels of the system: national policy making level, regional level of development planning and local vocational college level. Horizontally at each level the project reaches beyond traditional borders of the system and targets social partners, in order to bring VET closer to the labour market. The project therefore consists of two interconnected and closely cooperating components under this contract: Component 1 Education and training, Component 2 Labour market.
In the Component 1 the project will develop a VET policy paper followed by a strategy for its implementation, and build educational capacities needed for this process in five pilot vocational colleges, in the corresponding regions and at the national level. Complementary to that, in the Component 2 the project will build capacities of social partners and employment services, again at the three levels and in the same localities and regions.
The project is based on the concept of policy learning, which means developing and implementing VET policy by national, regional and local stakeholders as a learning process, assisted and facilitated by the Consultant. It therefore depends on extensive involvement and active participation of local partners, which is the only possible guarantee of a policy embedded in the national context, of its ownership by key stakeholders, and of sustainable changes resulting from its implementation.
The project will work with key modern VET development approaches: lifelong learning, involvement of social partners and participatory ways of work at all levels in the system and between them, communication and cooperation platforms to improve relevance to labour market, diversification of VET supply and flexibility for responding to changing demand, competency based approach for innovating VET curricula, learner centred teaching and training, decentralisation and increased school autonomy, opening up of colleges to serve as development centres reflecting local skills development needs, and quality assurance. The project will contextualise and implement these approaches within the national environment.

Capacity building activities in both components of the project will be based on organisational development and capacity building plans. They will include training, coaching, self- and peer-learning, and study visits to EU countries.

Services

Set up and support VET policy task force in developing the VET policy paper and in preparing a midterm implementation plan (VET strategy 2010)
Facilitate consultation, approval and dissemination of the VET policy and strategy
Support CSSVE, MLSP, their subordinated organisations at national level, four (pilot) regional departments of CSSVE, Chamber of Commerce and Industry and sectoral Trade Unions, four (pilot) regional employment authorities, regional Chambers of Commerce and Industry and Trade Unions, district and local authorities and social partners cooperating with the pilot colleges by jointly designing and implementing plans for organisational development and capacity building activities, training of staff and study visits to EU countries
Assist in designing college development plans
Develop capacity of pilot colleges
Increase teacher and trainer capacity for applying student centred and adult learning
methodologies and for providing career orientation
Introduce school democracy, improve decentralised college management capacity by training directors and their deputies, and reinforce role of trustee bodies towards managing colleges as
"development centres"
Support MLSP and social partners, especially employers, in defining pilot competence based qualification profile
Support the employment services and other relevant authorities or organisations in the pilot college districts and communities in identifying local target groups for short training and skills development programmes, participating in designing, monitoring and evaluating these programmes in collaboration with the pilot colleges