A Cedefop delegation headed by Deputy Director Mara Brugia met with national stakeholders in Bratislava on 20 June to launch the agency’s third country review on skills governance.

Following a request of the Slovak Ministry of Education, Science, Research and Sport, Cedefop engages in this work to help those in charge of education, employment and other policies reach broad agreement on a medium-term policy agenda to strengthen the national skills anticipation and matching system.

The meeting was hosted by the ministry and opened by State Secretary Peter Krajňák.

Ms Brugia and Cedefop experts Vladimir Kvetan and Jasper van Loo met with the national steering committee  – a body of national stakeholders set up to drive the review.

In her opening speech, Ms Brugia stressed the importance of the exercise: 'New jobs are being created, others are being destroyed. Job content is changing due to technological developments. Skills profiles of jobs more exposed to technology are more likely to change. This makes adjusting education and training provision imperative and continuing training a must for all. It also requires acknowledging the workplace as a learning venue and valuing more the skills that people acquire on the job. The days of long-term workforce planning are gone; but to make informed decisions on investments we need to shed some light on what the future is likely to look like. The importance of skills anticipation and sound labour market analysis has been acknowledged at EU level.'

Cedefop explained how it intends to shape the 18-month project and used its skills governance framework to identify and discuss possible review priorities to ensure that the methodological and policy support the agency provides can truly benefit the long-term development of the skills system in Slovakia.

Next steps are stakeholder interviews to identify bottlenecks and reflect on possible ways forward, creating opportunities for learning from methods and approaches applied in other European Union countries and a consensus building exercise leading up to a policy agenda with a clear action orientation.

Similar reviews have started in Greece and Bulgaria and another is planned for Estonia.

More info on the meeting at the ministry website (in Slovak).