A key aim of EU education and training policy is to improve the attractiveness of initial vocational education and training (IVET). IVET systems aim to provide young people with skills and competences to access the labour market and to remain and progress in it, thereby sustaining their employability. Participation levels in IVET provide a proxy measure of its attractiveness but not how pupils and parents see it compared to general education. Also, participation levels do not account for students who wanted to, but for some reason were unable or chose not to enrol in IVET. The indicator below is defined as the percentage of all upper secondary students (ISCED 3) enrolled in the vocational stream of education (IVET). EU averages are estimated from available country data.
Figure 1. IVET students as % of all upper secondary students
Source: Cedefop calculations based on Eurostat data, UOE data collection on formal education systems.
Key points
In 2020, 48.7% of all upper secondary students in the EU were enrolled in vocational programmes. Participation varied considerably between Member States. In 2020, Slovenia (with 70.8%) and Czechia (70.5%) had the highest share of upper secondary students in vocational programmes. Croatia, Austria, Netherlands, Finland, Slovakia and Luxembourg all had more than 60%. Greece (31.9%), Malta (27.6%), Lithuania (24.8%), Ireland (24.1%) and Cyprus (16.8%) had the lowest shares. On average, the share of students in IVET fell slightly in the EU between 2015 and 2020 by 0.2 percentage points. The largest increase was in Hungary where the share increased by 26.5 percentage points in 2020, up from 23.2% in 2015. The second largest increase, 4.2 percentage points, was in Estonia and the third in Slovenia by 3.3. percentage points. Over the same period, 15 Member States reported a drop: notably Portugal (by 6.1 percentage points), Belgium and Denmark (around 4 percentage points).
Non-EU country data indicate that VET programmes accounted for sizeable shares of upper secondary enrolments. In 2020, the percentages stood at 51.3% in Norway, more than 60% in Switzerland, Montenegro, North Macedonia and over 70% in Serbia. It was much lower in Iceland (29.5%) and Turkey (39.4% in 2020, down by 9.6 percentage points as compared to 2015).
Table 1. IVET students as % of all upper secondary students
Source: Cedefop calculations based on Eurostat data, UOE data collection on formal education systems. Notes: (d): ‘definition differs’; data are not presented when they are not available and/or do not support sufficiently reliable comparisons across countries or over time.
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