- 2018Implementation
- 2019Implementation
- 2020Implementation
- 2021Implementation
- 2022Implementation
- 2023Implementation
- 2024Implementation
- 2025Implementation
Background
Teacher continuing professional development (CPD) has gained increasing importance and is now considered a professional duty in the Luxembourgish education system. In its 2015 national reform programme, Luxembourg indicated its intention to modernise teacher and trainer professional development.
The project Teachers meet businesses, initiated in 2018 by the Chamber of Commerce and the Training Institute for National Education (IFEN), connects the worlds of school and work, particularly in emerging technologies and business sectors. It supports secondary education teachers in gaining insights into industry developments to help improve the training and guidance they provide to students. Participating teachers explore growing economic sectors and become familiar with the relevant qualifications and competences.
Objectives
Establishing a legal framework and implementing provisions for the organisation of teacher CPD, while introducing teachers to emerging economic sectors to keep their knowledge up to date and improve the guidance they provide to students.
Description
The 2015 legislation establishing the Training Institute for National Education (IFEN) stipulates that IFEN offers mandatory teacher CPD schemes to develop and refresh teaching staff competences. These include training leading to certification, coaching, supervision, job shadowing, and exchange networks. With IFEN’s support, schools may also develop optional internal CPD plans (Schulinterne Lehrer/innen-Weiterbildung) to align training activities with their objectives.
Teacher CPD is defined according to a competence framework that helps teachers conceptualise the competences required for their professional practice and share a common approach to fulfilling their teaching tasks. Each teacher must complete 48 hours of CPD over three years, of which at least 24 hours should focus on priority training areas or the school’s internal training plan. Current priorities include competence-based teaching and learning, ICT technologies, teamwork, and communication, while a maximum of 24 hours may be dedicated to disciplinary knowledge. Any training outside the teacher’s profile must be approved by the school director.
Within this framework, the Teachers meet Businesses project, launched in 2018 by the Chamber of Commerce and the Training Institute for National Education (IFEN), connects secondary education teachers with industry developments. It helps teachers discover growing economic sectors, familiarise themselves with relevant...
The 2015 legislation establishing the Training Institute for National Education (IFEN) stipulates that IFEN offers mandatory teacher CPD schemes to develop and refresh teaching staff competences. These include training leading to certification, coaching, supervision, job shadowing, and exchange networks. With IFEN’s support, schools may also develop optional internal CPD plans (Schulinterne Lehrer/innen-Weiterbildung) to align training activities with their objectives.
Teacher CPD is defined according to a competence framework that helps teachers conceptualise the competences required for their professional practice and share a common approach to fulfilling their teaching tasks. Each teacher must complete 48 hours of CPD over three years, of which at least 24 hours should focus on priority training areas or the school’s internal training plan. Current priorities include competence-based teaching and learning, ICT technologies, teamwork, and communication, while a maximum of 24 hours may be dedicated to disciplinary knowledge. Any training outside the teacher’s profile must be approved by the school director.
Within this framework, the Teachers meet Businesses project, launched in 2018 by the Chamber of Commerce and the Training Institute for National Education (IFEN), connects secondary education teachers with industry developments. It helps teachers discover growing economic sectors, familiarise themselves with relevant qualifications and competences, and improve the training and guidance they provide to students.
In 2019, a new law amending the 2015 law creating IFEN was adopted. It provides for new methods of providing in-service training to teachers: peer grouping, coaching, and e-learning.
In 2019, the implementation of the project Teachers meet business continued.
In 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the CPD offer was extended to cover knowledge and methods of distance learning, including distance learning for practical courses. The regular offer was also constantly adapted.
In 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the project, Teachers meet businesses, was suspended.
In 2021, in addition to constant update of its offer, IFEN created its first educational Third Place, F.use (Future Space for Education – Tiers lieu) to diversify its training and support offer, and thus respond to the challenges of the future of education. It is a physical space for exchange, innovation and experience-action which targets all education professionals. In these ‘classrooms of the future’, open and adaptable spaces, multiple activities are offered in the form of working sessions, activities of discovery or training sessions, focused on game-based learning, digital technology in general and the creation of one's own educational material.
In 2021, the project, Teachers meet businesses, was suspended.
In 2022, another Educational Third Place, F.use, opened.
The ministry of Education’s VET Department (SFP), in collaboration with IFEN, organised thematic seminars for teachers and in-company trainers, tailored to the provision of the newly introduced IVET programme DAP Éducation (socio-pedagogical childcare agent). In 2022, the project, Teachers meet businesses, was discontinued.
Since March 2023, the ICT teacher training courses offered by the National Education Training Institute’s (IFEN), includes conferences and seminars about AI and related tools. In the 2023/24 school year, the institute introduced massive open online courses (MOOCs) and blended learning formats to supplement these face-to-face training sessions. The majority of the IFEN’s AI related teacher training courses, which are part of the ICT domain, include:
- chat about ChatGPT and AI,
- demystifying AI and ChatGPT,
- AI, ethics and future-proofing the classroom,
- introduction to generative AI: using ChatGPT to optimise teacher preparation.
IFEN has continued to diversify its training formats (such as seminars, seminars with an individual learning phase, resonance spaces, guided exchange networks, reading circles, educational walks and film debates) and to develop on-line training courses.
To support and prepare teachers for the implementation of digital science courses throughout secondary education, IFEN is offering tailored continuing professional development courses.
IFEN has introduced its very first 'training pathway'. These pathways aim to strengthen expertise in targeted areas while developing professional skills. They are structured to provide a coherent and progressive learning experience, enriched by a variety of teaching resources in a specific area. It emphasises flexibility and customisation, offering tailor-made support from experienced trainers, a practical approach through projects and observation periods, and a multi-level recognition system.
In 2023, a new Vocational Aptitude Diploma 'Inclusion' was introduced. The introduction of the programme is accompanied by a dedicated in-company trainer training deployed by IFEN.
In January 2024, the program Teachers meet business was relaunched. The first session of the 2023/2024 edition is devoted to the commerce sector.
In 2025, IFEN has continued the Teachers meet businesses programme. It also hosted the first Trainer Innovation Day to prepare their new networking offer for trainers which is set to be launched in October 2025.
Furthermore, IFEN is a partner for the INTERREG Grande-Région programme 'Engagement’GR' which aims to promote the integration of youths into the labour market in the Greater Region, sustainability, digital and citizenship education, by further training educators on these topics.
Bodies responsible
- Training Institute for National Education (IFEN)
- Chamber of Commerce
Target groups
Education professionals
- Teachers
Entities providing VET
- Companies
Thematic categories
Governance of VET and lifelong learning
This thematic category looks at existing legal frameworks providing for strategic, operational – including quality assurance – and financing arrangements for VET and lifelong learning (LLL). It examines how VET and LLL-related policies are placed in broad national socioeconomic contexts and coordinate with other strategies and policies, such as economic, social and employment, growth and innovation, recovery and resilience.
This thematic category covers partnerships and collaboration networks of VET stakeholders – especially the social partners – to shape and implement VET in a country, including looking at how their roles and responsibilities for VET at national, regional and local levels are shared and distributed, ensuring an appropriate degree of autonomy for VET providers to adapt their offer.
The thematic category also includes efforts to create national, regional and sectoral skills intelligence systems (skills anticipation and graduate tracking) and using skills intelligence for making decisions about VET and LLL on quality, inclusiveness and flexibility.
This thematic sub-category refers both to formal mechanisms of stakeholder engagement in VET governance and to informal cooperation among stakeholders, which motivate shared responsibility for quality VET. Formal engagement is usually based on legally established institutional procedures that clearly define the role and responsibilities for relevant stakeholders in designing, implementing and improving VET. It also refers to establishing and increasing the degree of autonomy of VET providers for agile and flexible VET provision.
In terms of informal cooperation, the sub-category covers targeted actions by different stakeholders to promote or implement VET. This cooperation often leads to creating sustainable partnerships and making commitments for targeted actions, in line with the national context and regulation, e.g. national alliances for apprenticeships, pacts for youth or partnerships between schools and employers. It can also include initiatives and projects run by the social partners or sectoral organisations or networks of voluntary experts and executives, retired or on sabbatical, to support their peers in the fields of VET and apprenticeships, as part of the EAfA.
Teachers, trainers and school leaders competences
Competent and motivated VET teachers in schools and trainers in companies are crucial to VET becoming innovative and relevant, agile, resilient, flexible, inclusive and lifelong.
This thematic category comprises policies and practices of initial training and continuing professional development approaches in a systemic and systematic manner. It also looks at measures aiming to update (entry) requirements and make teaching and training careers attractive and bring more young and talented individuals and business professionals into teaching and training. Supporting VET educators by equipping them with adequate competences, skills and tools for the green transition and digital teaching and learning are addressed in separate thematic sub-categories.
The measures in this category target teachers and school leaders, company trainers and mentors, adult educators and guidance practitioners.
This thematic sub-category refers to all kinds of initial and continuing professional development (CPD) for VET educators who work in vocational schools and in companies providing VET. VET educators include teachers and school leaders, trainers and company managers involved in VET, as well as adult educators and guidance practitioners – those who work in school- and work-based settings. The thematic sub-category includes national strategies, training programmes or individual courses to address the learning needs of VET educators and to develop their vocational (technical) skills, and pedagogical (teaching) skills and competences. Such programmes concern state-of-the-art vocational pedagogy, innovative teaching methods, and competences needed to address evolving teaching environments, e.g. teaching in multicultural settings, working with learners at risk of early leaving, etc.
Subsystem
Further reading
Country
Type of development
Cedefop, & ReferNet. (2026). Teacher continuing professional development: Luxembourg. In Cedefop, & ReferNet. (2026). Timeline of VET policies in Europe (2025 update) [Online tool].
https://www.cedefop.europa.eu/el/tools/timeline-vet-policies-europe/search/28380