Cedefop’s thematic country review (TCR) on apprenticeships for Italy was launched at an event hosted by the Ministry of Employment in Rome on 6 July. Slovenia kicked off the latest round of reviews in June and a project for Greece will follow in September.

The event in Rome discussed the focus of the review in the country. It was attended by 20 stakeholders and was chaired by the Ministry represented by Raffaele Ieva, Director of DG Training and the project’s coordinator Valentina Curzi, and Cedefop’s Antonio Ranieri (Head of Department for Learning and Employability) and Lisa Rustico (expert).

By understanding the Italian system’s strengths and weaknesses and the challenges at stake, the review would support creation of quality apprenticeships for 15 to 25 year-olds. Apprenticeship provision would organically integrate, in a ‘dual system’, learning at school and learning at work.

Read the full story on the Rome event.

At the Greek Ministry of Education in Athens, a Cedefop delegation discussed with Greek authorities and social partners on 13 July the common work in the frame of the country’s apprenticeship review.

Loukas Zahilas (Head of Department for VET Systems and Institutions), Ilias Livanos (expert) and Vlasis Korovilos (assistant) presented the methodological framework developed by Cedefop for the TCR project.

A launch event, planned for September, will involve a wide array of national stakeholders and will further elaborate on cooperation and main policy challenges regarding apprenticeships in Greece.

Read the full story on the Athens meeting.

The thematic country reviews on apprenticeships is a Cedefop project which looks at national developments on apprenticeships, while considering contextual factors. It started in 2014 as a pilot for two countries who had expressed interest, Malta and Lithuania, and has been extended to other interested countries (for 2015-16 it is Italy, Greece and Slovenia).

The Slovenia review was launched at an event hosted by the Ministry of Education, Science and Sport in Ljubljana on 16 June.

Participants representing all major vocational education and training (VET) stakeholders discussed the challenges of re-establishing apprenticeship in Slovenia and shaped their expectations from the review. The review can help Slovenia reassess lessons learned from past experience in the country and also bring know-how from other countries that have effective apprenticeship systems.

Overall, the expectation is that the review can help develop good evidence base for policy decisions, suggest possible scenarios for developing apprenticeship and support the dialogue taking place in the country on how to strengthen the link between VET and the labour market.

Read the full story on the Ljubljana event.