At a meeting organised by Cedefop and the Bulgarian Ministry of Education and Science in Sofia on 3 June, Cedefop presented the main findings of the skills governance review in the country.

The review is part of Cedefop’s skills governance project, which aims at strengthening skills anticipation and matching in EU Member States.

Cedefop has been working with Bulgaria since 2017 and has consulted with a wide range of stakeholders. Face-to-face and telephone interviews and three online consensus building questionnaires were used to map the current state of skills anticipation in the country and to develop a stakeholder perspective on what could be possible development opportunities for the future. An online survey among municipalities was used to map the regional/local perspective on skills governance.

Cedefop experts Stelina Chatzichristou and Jasper van Loo, supported by experts of Fondazione Giacomo Brodolini, presented the key findings. These included an overview of what stakeholders see as main priorities: to take steps to further develop vocational education and training planning and career guidance based on skills anticipation, and to strengthen overall management and coordination.

The Cedefop experts also presented a draft policy roadmap based on consensus about what stakeholders see as relevant and feasible steps and roles for different stakeholders to implement these priorities and on the centre’s experience in analysing skills governance systems and approaches elsewhere.

The roadmap strikes a balance between ambition and feasibility and turns priorities into actionable policy responses that can be achieved in the short to medium term. Once implemented, the actions and their outcomes could become a basis for further work at a later stage.

In line with the principle that countries drive the reviews and own the process, the national steering committee will now validate the policy roadmap. The finalised roadmap and all other review findings will become part of a Cedefop report to be released in 2020.