The Agora conference - organised jointly by Cedefop and the German Presidency as a follow-up to the Helsinki Communiqu? - assessed the progress made in implementing the Copenhagen - Maastricht priorities and considered further action for vocational education and training (VET). Jan Figel’s call for staying ‘open-minded and open-hearted’ emphasised the importance of all stakeholders, policy-makers, researchers, social partners and practitioners to cooperate in tackling the VET challenges.
The conference underlined that in the effort to build a common European area for VET, several useful approaches are already being developed, including the European qualifications framework, the common principles of quality assurance the Europass documents, the European credit system for VET, and the common principles for lifelong guidance. These new tools now need to be further developed, tested and implemented.
In addition, more attention will now need to be given to the following areas:
- making greater investments in VET in order to promote both equity and efficiency;
- valuing peoples skills and making the best possible use of their potential;
- identifying the skills needed by the labour market;
- reinforcing the role of VET in lifelong learning and in innovation and research;
- integrating VET policy with related policies such as in employment, social affairs and finance.
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Cedefop