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Vocational education and training (VET) has a key economic function, both in terms of up-skilling and integrating young people into the labour market and in providing high quality technical skills. However, in past decades, VET as part of initial education has been neglected: education policy reform and research have tended to focus primarily on school and tertiary education.
The chief civil servants of education ministries of OECD countries met in 2005 in Copenhagen and made VET a priority for OECD work on education. Following an initial mapping exercise a work programme has been designed which seeks to assist countries in increasing the responsiveness of VET systems to labour markets requirements. It aims to improve the evidence base, identify a set of policy options and develop tools to appraise VET policy initiatives. This project runs parallel to an OECD study on systemic innovation in VET.
A programme of analytical work draws on evidence from all OECD countries. It includes an international questionnaire on VET systems, a framework of policy appraisal and evaluation, reviews of previous OECD and academic literature regarding key topics such as costs and benefits of VET and indicators to assess the quality of VET provision, as well as analyses of labour market outcomes exploiting statistical data from labour force surveys and PISA and forecasting of future skills needs.
During a first project phase, between the end of 2007 and the end of 2008 country visits are being conducted in:
A country visit typically involves a fact-finding visit and a main policy visit of 3-5 days each. The results of these visits are analysed in reports that provide country specific policy recommendations. Evidence from both the analytical work and the country reviews will feed into the initial comparative report which will be available on the OECD website in 2009.
In 2009 and 2010, a second phase of this work will take place with further reviews in:
The final comparative report, drawing together all the conclusions of the study will be published in 2010.
Contact information
Simon Field - Project Manager, simon.field@oecd.org, Tel +33 1 45 24 18 71
Kathrin Hoeckel - Policy Analyst, kathrin.hoeckel@oecd.org Tel +33 1 45 24 93 50
Viktoria Kis - Policy Analyst, viktoria.kis@oecd.org Tel +33 1 45 24 89 66
Malgorzata Kuczera - Policy Analyst, malgorzata.kuczera@oecd.org Tel +33 1 45 24 86 62
Jennifer Gouby – Project Assistant, jennifer.gouby@oecd.org Tel +33 1 45 24 92 18
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Click here for the OECD Policy Review of Vocational Education and Training Country Reports
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