11 DEC 2023
Data insights

Skills anticipation in Slovakia (2023 Update)

Summary

Overview of the Slovakian approach

Skills anticipation in Slovakia is under development. A range of different actors bear responsibility for various aspects of skills anticipation. Cooperation between them is not always effective, resulting in fragmented labour market intelligence that does not fully meet the needs of various end-users[i].

In 2017 the National Programme for the Development of Education (NDPE) was approved by the government and authored by the Ministry of Education, Science, Research and Sport and was updated in 2022. It was based on the Programme Declaration of the Slovak Republic and the Recovery and Resilience Plan, which aim to support investments and reforms, including "Quality Education," as a response to the economic downturn caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. The pandemic has brought unprecedented challenges to education, and the NPDE reflects on its impact on schools and educational institutions. The document was prepared through a transparent process involving relevant stakeholders The NDPE is a 10-year implementation plan consisting of policy measures which are of direct relevance to skills anticipation. While various skills anticipation measures are already in place – including collection and analysis of administrative and survey data, and skills forecasting – the links between the various sources are yet to be fully exploited.

The regulation of skills anticipation activities includes laws on the public employment services, general and vocational education and training (VET), and higher education. The National System of Occupations (Národná sústava povolaní) and National Qualifications System (Národnej sústavy kvalifikácií) – along with the inter-institutional sectoral VET councils are also relevant here. All these national-level regulations are framed by the National Employment Strategy of the Slovak Republic (2014-2020), which creates the link between national and European policies.

Most existing skills anticipation initiatives have been developed under the auspices of the Ministry of Labour, Social Affairs and Family (Ministerstvo práce, sociálnych vecí a rodiny Slovenskej Republiky, MPSVR), with the Central Office of Labour, Social Affairs and Family (Ústredie práce, sociálnych vecí a rodiny, COLSAF) taking the lead. The COLSAF is the main body responsible for preparing data and information about the labour market situation (skills assessment) and its developments and making it available to relevant institutions. The key skills anticipation tasks are given to COLSAF and regional labour offices. The Ministry of Education, Science, Research and Sport (Ministerstvo školstva, vedy, výskumu a športu Slovenskej republiky) is another key player coordinating policymaking, especially with regard to VET and higher education. At the sub-national level, self-governing regional authorities lead the dialogue with other stakeholders.

While most skills intelligence is targeted at policymakers, some initiatives target young people considering vocational education courses (and their parents) by offering information about their future labour market opportunities. There seems to be no budget specifically dedicated to skills anticipation, and a great share of the resources spent on generating skills intelligence have been provided by the European Social Fund (ESF). Although anticipation activities exist, the lack of a coordinated approach has not supported the link between the results of skills intelligence and policymaking. Research focusing of skills anticipation maintains only a weak impact on policymaking.

Description

The process of skills anticipation in Slovakia is still in development.  After the publication of Learning Slovakia - which was approved by government in 2017 – a National Programme for the Development of Education (NPDE) was constructed by the Ministry of Education. The NDPE is a 10-year implementation plan consisting of 106 policy measures, some of which are of direct relevance to skills anticipation. Various skills anticipation measures are already in place: these include collection and analysis of administrative and survey data, and skills forecasting – which have benefited from the support of EU funding and CEDEFOP. However, there is a view that the links between the various sources are yet to be fully exploited.

The PES runs activities aimed at collecting and disseminating skills intelligence. However, skills intelligence is dealt with by the Ministry of Labour, Social Affairs and Family (Section of Informatics, Department of Employment Services Methodology) and the Institute of Social Policy, which is part of the Ministry[ii].

Aims

The primary aims of skills anticipation are to inform policy making on employment, to harmonise VET, and to provide information to employers at national and regional levels. It is notable that the NDPE explicitly recognises the need for secondary education to be aligned with labour market needs, and to develop an adequate system of graduate tracking.

Legal framework

The National Employment Strategy of the Slovak Republic to 2020 (2014) outlines the two overarching aims which relate to skills anticipation:

  • Providing sufficiently qualified labour in all sectors of the national economy; and
  • Ensuring that the education system is responsive to the needs and requirements of employers.

The Act on Employment Services (No.5/2004) requires the public employment service – comprising Central Office of Labour, Social Affairs and Family (COLSAF) and the regional labour offices – to analyse and forecast labour market developments, and to publish them on their website (since 2013).[iii] To date, only sporadic outputs have been provided and made publicly available at the local level. 

The Act on Vocational Education and Training (No. 184/2009) stipulates that professional associations should cooperate with COLSAF in the preparation of analyses and forecasts of labour market developments. Vocational education and employment-oriented training are coordinated at national and regional levels.

Other relevant legislation includes:

  • the Education Act (2008), which sets out, amongst other things, principles, objectives, and organisation of education in schools, admission to education, length and performance of compulsory education, programmes available, etc.
  • the Act on Teaching Staff and Vocational Training employees (No. 317/2009), which covers vocational and careers guidance of students;
  • the Act on Higher Education (No. 131/2002), which foresees the obligation to provide career counselling services to students in higher education.

The National System of Occupations (NSO) and the related National Qualifications System (NQS), completed in 2015, are two elements of the legal framework relating to skills and skills forecasting. The NSO comprises a job registry which provides information on employers' job needs (e.g., required skills and qualifications); together with additional labour market information (i.e., sectoral developments and analysis), the job registry is available on a web platform. The NQS is a publicly accessible register of all qualifications. The NSO and NQS were funded by the ESF. Preparation of the National Qualifications Framework (NQF) has taken place in parallel to the construction of NSO and NQS. The 2015 VET Law attempted to establish a clearer division of stakeholder obligations and responsibilities, given that different stakeholders were active at different governance levels[iv].

In March 2017, an expert advisory team, commissioned by Minister of Education, presented a National Programme for the Development of Education (NDPE): Learning Slovakia (Národný program rozvoja výchovy a vzdelávania “Učiace sa Slovensko”). The implementation plan, announced by the Ministry of Education in June 2018, defined how the goals set out in Learning Slovakia would be achieved in the next 10 years. Several objectives of the implementation plans have direct relevance to skills anticipation, including for example:

  • Carrying out a demand-driven ESIF-funded project (EUR 30 million) aiming to align secondary education with labour market needs;
  • Improving career guidance and counselling, by introducing counsellors at district and regional levels; a total of EUR 18 008 185 is earmarked for 2019-27;
  • Carrying out a higher education graduate tracking survey, based on experience from the collaboration with CEDEFOP on skills governance.

Learning Slovakia also proposes a study on the expected impact of Industry 4.0 on skills needs. Meanwhile, a strategy for Industry 4.0 has been developed under the auspices of the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister of the Slovak Republic for Investments and Informatisation.

Governance

COLSAF is responsible for the public employment services, and it implements national labour policy via the regional and local labour, social affairs, and family offices[v] (hereafter: labour offices). Self-governing regional authorities are responsible for secondary schools, including VET-oriented secondary schools, mainly with respect to the planning of educational provision.

The role of stakeholders

Given the lack of a formal and cohesive system of skills anticipation in Slovakia, cooperation between employers, VET providers, and/or the regional authorities responsible for VET institutions is particularly important.

Between 2009 and 2013, employers and government representatives formed sectoral VET councils, responsible for sectoral skills anticipation activities. When the councils were abolished, the responsibility for skills anticipation was given to COLSAF, the regional labour offices, and to sector councils.

24 new sectoral VET councils were created by mid-2015 by the Ministry of Education, Science, Research and Sport (MPSVR) and employer representatives. They include key stakeholders (such as MPSVR, employer representatives, and an expert from the State Institute of Vocational Education) responsible for the definition of occupational standards, the preparation of sectoral analyses, skill needs surveys and forecasts. The private business sector, and in particular the representatives of the automotive industry, were the main promoters of the attempt to adapt the VET offer to employers’ skill needs.

High-level bodies relevant to skills anticipation include the following:

  • Social partners (representatives of employers and employees), who are represented in the Economic and Social Council, a consultative body of the Slovak government and social partners at the national level. The social partners comment on issues of economic and social life, including employment, and on draft strategic and conceptual documents, policies and legislation. The formal nature of the Council may stifle debate about issues relating to employment, skills, etc.;
  • The Government Council for Vocational Education and Training, an advisory body to the Slovak government on vocational education and training, which also includes representatives of employers’ associations.

Social partners are not consulted regularly regarding the demand for the foreign labour force and the impacts of labour migration on the national labour market –no similar mechanism is in place in Slovakia. The social partners are only involved on an ad-hoc basis, for example in the context of specific projects or in the preparation of legislation and policies.

The Ministry of Labour, Social Affairs and Family prioritises stakeholder cooperation and coordination in lifelong learning, following the OECD's recommendations for Slovakia as part of its 2020 National Skills Strategy. To accomplish this, the Government Council for Vocational Education (Rada vlády pre odborné vzdelávanie) is expected to be expanded and transformed into the Government Council for Lifelong Learning (Rada vlády pre celoživotné vzdelávanie), which will govern all education segments and include all relevant stakeholders.

Overall, the coordination of activities between the Ministry of Education, Science, Research and Sport and MPSVR is crucial, as these two institutions oversee all ESF co-financed skills anticipation projects.

Target groups

The main intended target groups of skills anticipation exercises are:

  • policymakers (in the fields of employment and education);
  • public employment services;
  • regional self-governing authorities that oversee VET secondary schools;
  • VET providers;
  • students/young people.

It is interesting to note that regional platforms have been created for different relevant stakeholders to discuss regulation of entry into secondary schools. Consultations are based on a macro-economic model of Trexima.

Funding and resources

There seems to be no budget specifically dedicated to skills anticipation exercises and no information is available on the exact expenditure on skills anticipation in Slovakia.

The established skills anticipation exercises conducted by COLSAF are funded by the Government. The development of new skills anticipation instruments is funded from ESF grants and/or the national budget.

Resources flowing into building the skills anticipation system are not sufficiently coordinated, with various autonomous projects being implemented by different public institutions.

Methods and tools

Slovakia does not have a coherent system of skills anticipation. Although there are plans for developing the necessary instruments for coherent skills anticipation activities, progress has been slow and rather fragmented.

The PES engages in analyses of future skill needs, acting on behalf of the Ministry of Labour.

Skills assessments

COLSAF is the main body responsible for preparing data and information about the labour market situation (skills assessment) and its developments and making it available to relevant institutions. The key skills anticipation tasks are given to COLSAF and regional labour offices.

A form of skill assessment has been undertaken in the process of preparing the National Register of Occupations. Profiles of occupations and vocations were created which specify educational standards as well as skill and task demands of employers. The Labour Ministry was the key institution involved in the preparation of the National Register of Occupations and was supported by the sectoral councils created for this purpose.

Skills forecasts

In Slovakia, macroeconomic models are not routinely used for skill needs forecasts. Since 2010, the Institute of Economic Research of the Slovak Academy of Sciences (IER SAVBA) started a comprehensive forecasting exercise on labour market demand up to 2025.[vi] A model based on the CEDEFOP methodology was devised and, in 2014, data on the anticipated labour supply and demand up to 2025 were presented disaggregated by sectors, occupations and educational attainment. Since 2014, yearly updates resulting from methodological improvements which include regional-level analysis have been published. The results are used by academic and research institutions in the education sector. These efforts are financed from the national budget. The last edition was published in 2018.

In 2014, COLSAF launched the ESF-funded project Forecasting labour market developments and commissioned it to Trexima Bratislava, a survey and analytical organisation. The aim of the project is to develop a comprehensive skills anticipation system with a view to promote a better match between the provision of secondary level VET courses and training programmes, and labour market demand. Forecasts of occupational shortages have been discussed in meetings of the National VET Council.  The Act on Employment Services requires COLSAF and regional labour offices to publish labour market forecasts on their website (starting in 2013). Trexima has launched a website which provides a variety of labour market data and forecasts.

In 2016, the Skills Governance Project identified the need for better skills anticipation to improve the provision of public employment services. As part of this effort, employers are required to report job vacancies to COLSAF. Until 2022, the Ministry of Labour, Social Affairs and Family contracted Trexima to implement forecasting based on the Internet guide of the labour market (Internetový sprievodca trhom práce) portal, operated by Trexima. Based on the reported vacancies, COLSAF published a quarterly list of occupations with shortages to aid in forecasting skill needs for the provision of public employment services.

The Ministry of Labour, Social Affairs and Family will now handle forecasting internally after ending its cooperation with Trexima and the ISTP portal. Employers are required to report vacancies to COLSAF, and vacancies on private portals will also be considered if the portal cooperates with COLSAF.

The Ministry is prioritising stakeholder cooperation and coordination in lifelong learning, following OECD recommendations. The successful Re-Pass and Re-Pass+ and Kompas+ projects facilitated adult reskilling and upskilling via COLSAF since 2014. In February 2022, COLSAF launched the “Don't lose your job, educate yourself!” project, which targets anyone in the labour market and aims to reimburse reskilling and education related to digitalisation, green transition, and professions with shortages.

Skills foresight

No skill foresight exercises have been identified in Slovakia.

However, the PES is using interviews and surveys with stakeholders, as well as gathering experts’ views through workshops/meetings/panels to collect skills intelligence[vii].

Other skills anticipation practices

Labour shortages in Slovakia are identified based on administrative data and employer surveys:

  • The Quarterly Work Reports, published by the Statistical Office, detailing the number of vacancies by industrial sector and geography.
  • The Quarterly Report on Jobs in Small Enterprises and in Entrepreneurs, containing the number of unfilled vacancies by industrial sectors, jobs and geography. These reports are based on surveying a sample of 10,500 SMEs/entrepreneurs.
  • Sectoral reports, including data on vacancies according to the classification of employment major groups. The reports are based on a survey of companies employing 20 or more employees.[viii]

An initiative to link higher education to labour market needs was the ESF-funded national project Universities as engines of the development of a knowledge society (2013-2015), which was coordinated by the Slovak Centre of Scientific and Technical Information (SCSTI). The project aimed to assess how effectively courses met labour market needs by tracking labour market outcomes of university graduates using administrative data.

Several regions have engaged in employers’ surveys to grasp their skill needs. However, similar surveys concerning skill needs and tasks are not conducted nationally in a systematic way. Data collection from SMEs remains a challenge. As identified in Cedefop’s project on Slovakia’s skills anticipation, education providers and employers acknowledge the need for more comprehensive and systematic information on skills supply and demand at regional and local levels. Similar information could increase the impact of existing regional collaboration between employers and training providers and facilitate identifying ways to better address local skill shortages (Cedefop, 2020b).

In 2017, COLSAF also collected and published, for the first time, data on job transition of school graduates. In 2020, a website was launched offering more detailed data, including for example the type of contract and the match between graduates’ education and field of employment. Information is based on daily data interlinked from several administrative sources, information systems of the education sector, employment services, social insurance agency, and labour cost information systems). Also available are geographic distribution of placement, top three jobs, top three sectors of the economy, average and median wages, registered unemployment rate, the average number of days needed to find the first job are.

Dissemination and use

As the production of skills intelligence in Slovakia is ad hoc and fragmented, it is difficult to assess how the results of the skills anticipation exercises described above are disseminated and used.

Although authorities gather detailed and high-quality data (e.g., on jobseeker previous occupation, school completed and year of graduation), it is believed that policy decisions and student choices are not sufficiently supported by skills intelligence, since accessing such data is challenging. At the same time, some key data crucial for developing labour market intelligence are not collected at all (Cedefop, 2020b).

Websites of particular projects represent the dominant dissemination channel for the results of all these initiatives.

The PES enriches reports and executive summaries, addressed both to externals and its staff with skills intelligence. Skills intelligence is included in handbooks/guidebooks/toolkits, and presented at internal conferences/events for PES staff, including career guidance counsellors. The latter can use skills intelligence when they offer services to job-seekers[ix].

Use of skills anticipation in policy

The skills anticipation outputs are utilised by central and regional governments, education providers, social partners, and the academic and research community. The Educational Policy Institute (Inštitút vzdelávacej politiky, IVP) established by the Ministry of Education, Science, Research and Sport, and the State Institute of Vocational Education (SIOV), use the findings from skills anticipation exercises to adjusting secondary VET programmes. IVP's mission is to provide ad hoc analyses, as well as forecasts and participate in the preparation of educational policy. SIOV provides, amongst other things, basic pedagogical documents for apprenticeships and study fields. It is directly managed by the Ministry of Education, Science and Research.

Instruments and tools for identifying labour market shortages are currently used for determining active labour market policy and influencing VET policy. The Ministry of Education, Science, Research and Sport with MPSVR, professional associations and trade unions, update and publish a list of fields of study and fields of education with a shortage of graduates in the labour market on an annual basis.

Labour market forecasts (prepared by COLSAF and Trexima within the ESF-funded project forecasting labour market developments) are used to support decisions of regional and local authorities, which maintain secondary level VET schools to assess the number of places offered on courses.

Active Labour Market Policies (ALMPs), upskilling and reskilling programmes addressing future skills requirements and lifelong training options are being redefined/re-designed in line with changing skills requirements/skills intelligence[x]. For example, in 2021 a Lifelong learning and counselling strategy for 2021-2030 (LLCS 2030) was approved: the strategy proposes numerous measures connected to four thematic areas, one of which is the construction of a system of skills management and identification of lifelong learning needs.

Target groups’ uses of skills anticipation outputs

Skills forecasts are used in vocational and career guidance to the extent that they are available and relevant for the services provided. The use of skills intelligence does not appear to be a key element of career guidance services.

 

Please cite this document as:  Cedefop. (2023). Skills anticipation in Slovakia. Skills intelligence: data insights. URL [accessed DATE]

Bibliography

Endnotes

[i] Cedefop. (2020b).

[ii] European Commission. (2022).

[iii] Regional labour offices are publishing documents on regional priorities for supporting employment in their region (Regional Employment Plans). These are being published in a non-systematic way, without a centralised repository for this type of analyses and only for selected regions. Moreover, the information included is not analytical - mainly only descriptive statistics on the general situation in the local labour market, provision of ALMP, and general priorities for future delivery of employment services in the region. See MPSVR (2016) for an example document in Slovak.

[iv] Cedefop. (2020b).

[v] In relation to one of the active labour market programs (ALMP) provided by COLSAF, supporting job seekers in the labour market, implemented under §46 of the Act on Employment services, regional labour offices are obliged to prepare an assessment of skill needs in their region. These assessment reports are used in creating the portfolio of training courses provided under this particular ALMP. Assessment reports are not public; they are circulated only within COLSAF.

[vi] ISTP. (n.d.b).

[vii] European Commission. (2022).

[ix] European Commission. (2022).

[x] Ibid.