- 2016Approved/Agreed
- 2022Approved/Agreed
Background
Granting more autonomy to schools to enable them to respond more adequately to their needs.
Objectives
Creating and deploying tools to support secondary schools on the ground in their development efforts.
Description
The School development plan (Plan de développement de l'établissement scolaire - PDS) was introduced by the law of 15 December 2016. Within this framework, schools are requested to describe their curricular and extracurricular activities in the PDS to outline their profile and analyse their general situation. The plans are to be set by a school development committee (Cellule de développement scolaire, CDS). The CDS is coordinated by the school directorate and involves school staff appointed by the director for a three-year period that may be renewed. The committee analyses and interprets the school's data, identifies priority needs, defines development strategies, elaborates the school charter, the profile and the PDS, ensures internal and external communication, while establishing a triennial plan for the continuing training of high-school staff. The Division for the Development of Schools supports schools' development especially in elaborating and implementing the school development plans (PDSs). The Division has provided several transversal tools, such as a website dedicated to the development of schools, forms allowing schools to coordinate and follow up their PDS, and adaptable questionnaires to facilitate data collection about the perception of school actors.
In September 2022, the Division for the Development of Schools supports schools' development was integrated into the Training Institute of National Education (IFEN).
Bodies responsible
- Ministry of Education, Children and Youth
Target groups
Education professionals
- Teachers
- School leaders
Other
Thematic categories
Governance of VET and lifelong learning
This thematic category looks at existing legal frameworks providing for strategic, operational – including quality assurance – and financing arrangements for VET and lifelong learning (LLL). It examines how VET and LLL-related policies are placed in broad national socioeconomic contexts and coordinate with other strategies and policies, such as economic, social and employment, growth and innovation, recovery and resilience.
This thematic category covers partnerships and collaboration networks of VET stakeholders – especially the social partners – to shape and implement VET in a country, including looking at how their roles and responsibilities for VET at national, regional and local levels are shared and distributed, ensuring an appropriate degree of autonomy for VET providers to adapt their offer.
The thematic category also includes efforts to create national, regional and sectoral skills intelligence systems (skills anticipation and graduate tracking) and using skills intelligence for making decisions about VET and LLL on quality, inclusiveness and flexibility.
This thematic sub-category refers to further development of national quality assurance (QA) systems for IVET and CVET, for all learning environments (school-based provision and work-based learning, including apprenticeships) and all learning types (digital, face-to-face or blended), delivered by both public and private providers. These systems are underpinned by the EQAVET quality criteria and by indicative descriptors applied both at system and provider levels, as defined in Annex II of the VET Recommendation. The sub-category concerns creating and improving external and self-evaluation of VET providers, and establishing criteria of QA, accreditation of providers and programmes. It also covers the activities of Quality assurance national reference points for VET on implementing and further developing the EQAVET framework, including the implementation of peer reviews at VET system level.
Teachers, trainers and school leaders competences
Competent and motivated VET teachers in schools and trainers in companies are crucial to VET becoming innovative and relevant, agile, resilient, flexible, inclusive and lifelong.
This thematic category comprises policies and practices of initial training and continuing professional development approaches in a systemic and systematic manner. It also looks at measures aiming to update (entry) requirements and make teaching and training careers attractive and bring more young and talented individuals and business professionals into teaching and training. Supporting VET educators by equipping them with adequate competences, skills and tools for the green transition and digital teaching and learning are addressed in separate thematic sub-categories.
The measures in this category target teachers and school leaders, company trainers and mentors, adult educators and guidance practitioners.
This thematic sub-category refers to all kinds of initial and continuing professional development (CPD) for VET educators who work in vocational schools and in companies providing VET. VET educators include teachers and school leaders, trainers and company managers involved in VET, as well as adult educators and guidance practitioners – those who work in school- and work-based settings. The thematic sub-category includes national strategies, training programmes or individual courses to address the learning needs of VET educators and to develop their vocational (technical) skills, and pedagogical (teaching) skills and competences. Such programmes concern state-of-the-art vocational pedagogy, innovative teaching methods, and competences needed to address evolving teaching environments, e.g. teaching in multicultural settings, working with learners at risk of early leaving, etc.
Subsystem
Further reading
Country
Type of development
Cedefop, & ReferNet. (2025). School development plan: Luxembourg. In Cedefop, & ReferNet. (2025). Timeline of VET policies in Europe (2024 update) [Online tool].
https://www.cedefop.europa.eu/en/tools/timeline-vet-policies-europe/search/28351