The VET quality strategy 2011–2020, prepared by the Ministry of Education and Culture's working group, supports the quality management of vocational education and training and evaluates VET as a whole. In addition, a set of criteria for a high quality apprenticeship training has been prepared as part of this quality strategy.

The Minister of Education and Science, Henna Virkkunen, emphasises the importance of education, especially VET, in combating the economic crisis and alleviating its adverse effects. ‘In the future, VET will form a uniform whole, supporting lifelong learning and offering high quality education services to various target groups’, she says.

The VET quality strategy encourages the improvement of the quality, effectiveness and cost efficiency of VET. All VET providers will have a quality management system by 2015.

The system of VET financing will support VET providers in achieving the aims set for the quality of operations and continuous quality improvement. To this end, the funding system will be clarified to apply uniform criteria to the funding of different forms of VET.

The steering of VET, as well as decision-making, will be based on reliable and varied performance and evaluation data and other knowledge bases.

Regarding apprenticeship training, uniform practices throughout the country are essential prerequisites for improving the quality of apprenticeship training. A guide for quality management as well as a national training programme in apprenticeship training should be developed.