- 2024Implementation
Background
Labour market developments, both in Greece and internationally, have shaped a new landscape in vocational education. Schools of higher vocational training (SAEK) (former vocational training institutes IEK) serve as a key pillar of initial vocational education in Greece and must effectively respond to emerging challenges.
The project ,Development of training guides and educational materials for IEK, now called SAEK, under Law 4763/2020 was launched in 2020 and aims to address key challenges in initial vocational education and training (IVET) in Greece. It seeks to reduce fragmentation and inconsistencies in IVET programme implementation by establishing a systematic and scientifically robust approach to developing and updating educational materials. The initiative supports the modernisation of the VET system by aligning it with professional standards, labour market needs, and international best practices. By ensuring that trainees acquire relevant skills and knowledge for successful labour market integration, the project enhances the credibility and attractiveness of VET in Greece.
Objectives
The project's objectives are:
- Enhancing quality and standardisation: develop scientifically robust, high-quality training guides for 130 approved specialisations and future ones and establish a standardised methodology for creating and updating training guides, educational materials, and exam topics banks.
- Alignment with Job profiles: use certified occupational profiles, ESCO skills databases, and international vocational education practices to ensure relevance and applicability, transforming professional tasks into measurable learning outcomes.
- Support for trainers and trainees: provide comprehensive, tailored support materials for trainers (in classrooms and workplaces), trainees, and other stakeholders involved in learning and certification.
- Continuous improvement: methodological facilitation of regular updates and revisions to educational materials, ensuring alignment with labour market developments.
- Collaboration with social partners: engage social partners and their scientific institutes in content validation to ensure alignment with occupational research and workforce needs.
- Promoting lifelong learning and career development: leverage certified occupational profiles to bridge education and professional practice, fostering lifelong learning opportunities.
- Enhancing the attractiveness of vocational education and training (VET): improve learning outcomes and assessment procedures to make VET a more appealing option for students and stakeholders.
Description
The project is a comprehensive initiative to update and develop educational materials for SAEK (Former IEK) programmes. It is expected to include three distinct actions:
- Conducting a study to investigate the characteristics, specificities, and challenges in the field of initial vocational education.
- Developing an educational methodology and producing training guides and educational materials based on it. This action includes the development of a training guide for both learners and trainers, a student textbook accompanied by trainer guidelines - leading to the creation of exam topic banks- and a support guide for textbook authors.
- Establishing a methodology for the flexible periodic evaluation and updating of the guides' content.
In 2024, new training guides were developed for all 130 specialisations and certified by the National Organisation for the Certification of Qualifications and Vocational Guidance (EOPPEP). These guides were officially published in Government Gazette B 4920/28.8.2024.
More specifically, core training materials - including training guides, educational resources, and exam topic banks - were created for all 130 SAEK specialisations. These materials provide detailed implementation specifications for apprenticeships and assessments, featuring restructured exam topic banks and practical examination guidelines.
Methodology and standardisation
To ensure consistency and adaptability across disciplines, a single, standardised methodology was adopted. This methodology transforms professional tasks into measurable learning outcomes, allowing for seamless updates and alignment with other educational curricula, including higher education.
A total of 390 integrated training materials were produced, covering 65 000 pages of content. This extensive effort was supported by 5,005 external contractors and 30 scientific support staff.
Alignment with professional standards
EOPPEP played a critical role in developing the training guides by providing 134 Certified Occupational Profiles, which serve as a framework for aligning vocational education curricula with labour market demands and professional standards.
Continuous monitoring and improvement
From the project's inception, a structured process for content updates and quality assurance was established. Continuous monitoring and periodic revisions are key to ensuring the relevance and effectiveness of training materials.
Collaboration and expertise
During this phase, the project has engaged 1 349 authors and consultants, with 281 competitive calls for proposals issued to recruit external experts. Training materials for each specialisation were collaboratively developed by teams of subject-matter experts and methodology consultants, ensuring both scientific rigour and practical applicability.
Bodies responsible
- General Secretariat for VET, Lifelong Learning and Youth
- National Organisation for Certification of Qualifications and Vocational Guidance (EOPPEP)
Target groups
Learners
- Learners in upper secondary, including apprentices
- Young people (15-29 years old)
Education professionals
- Trainers
- Adult educators
- Guidance practitioners
Entities providing VET
- VET providers (all kinds)
Other stakeholders
- Social partners (employer organisations and trade unions)
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 the integration of VET into economic, industrial, innovation, social and employment strategies, including those linked to recovery, green and digital transitions, and where VET is seen as a driver for innovation and growth. It includes national, regional, sectoral strategic documents or initiatives that make VET an integral part of broader policies, or applying a mix of policies to address an issue VET is part of, e.g. in addressing youth unemployment measures through VET, social and active labour market policies that are implemented in combination. National skill strategies aiming at quality and inclusive lifelong learning also fall into this sub-category.
This thematic sub-category refers both to formal mechanisms of stakeholder engagement in VET governance and to informal cooperation among stakeholders, which motivate shared responsibility for quality VET. Formal engagement is usually based on legally established institutional procedures that clearly define the role and responsibilities for relevant stakeholders in designing, implementing and improving VET. It also refers to establishing and increasing the degree of autonomy of VET providers for agile and flexible VET provision.
In terms of informal cooperation, the sub-category covers targeted actions by different stakeholders to promote or implement VET. This cooperation often leads to creating sustainable partnerships and making commitments for targeted actions, in line with the national context and regulation, e.g. national alliances for apprenticeships, pacts for youth or partnerships between schools and employers. It can also include initiatives and projects run by the social partners or sectoral organisations or networks of voluntary experts and executives, retired or on sabbatical, to support their peers in the fields of VET and apprenticeships, as part of the EAfA.
High-quality and timely skills intelligence is a powerful policy tool, helping improve economic competitiveness and fostering social progress and equality through the provision of targeted skills training to all citizens (Cedefop, 2020). Skills intelligence is the outcome of an expert-driven process of identifying, analysing, synthesising and presenting quantitative and/or qualitative skills and labour market information. Skills intelligence draws on data from multiple sources, such as graduate tracking systems, skills anticipation mechanisms, including at sectoral and regional levels. Actions related to establishing and developing such systems fall under this thematic sub-category.
Modernising VET offer and delivery
This thematic category looks at what and how individuals learn, how learning content and learning outcomes in initial and continuing VET are defined, adapted and updated. First and foremost, it examines how VET standards, curricula, programmes and training courses are updated and modernised or new ones created. Updated and renewed VET content ensures that learners acquire a balanced mix of competences that address modern demands, and are more closely aligned with the realities of the labour market, including key competences, digital competences and skills for green transition and sustainability, both sector-specific and across sectors. Using learning outcomes as a basis is important to facilitate this modernisation, including modularisation of VET programmes. Updating and developing teaching and learning materials to support the above is also part of the category.
The thematic category continues to focus on strengthening high-quality and inclusive apprenticeships and work-based learning in real-life work environments and in line with the European framework for quality and effective apprenticeships. It looks at expanding apprenticeship to continuing vocational training and at developing VET programmes at EQF levels 5-8 for better permeability and lifelong learning and to support the need for higher vocational skills.
This thematic category also focuses on VET delivery through a mix of open, digital and participative learning environments, including workplaces conducive to learning, which are flexible, more adaptable to the ways individuals learn, and provide more access and outreach to various groups of learners, diversifying modes of learning and exploiting the potential of digital learning solutions and blended learning to complement face-to-face learning.
Centres of vocational excellence that connect VET to innovation and skill ecosystems and facilitate stronger cooperation with business and research also fall into this category.
VET standards and curricula define the content and outcomes of learning, most often at national or sectoral levels. VET programmes are based on standards and curricula and refer to specific vocations/occupations. They all need to be regularly reviewed, updated and aligned with the needs of the labour market and society. They need to include a balanced mix of vocational and technical skills corresponding to economic cycles, evolving jobs and working methods, and key competences, providing for resilience, lifelong learning, employability, social inclusion, active citizenship, sustainable awareness and personal development (Council of the European Union, 2020). The thematic sub-category also refers to establishing new VET programmes, reducing their number or discontinuing some. It also includes design of CVET programmes and training courses to adapt to labour market, sectoral or individual up- and re-skilling needs.
The learning-outcomes-based approaches focus on what a learner is expected to know, to be able to do and understand at the end of a learning process (Cedefop, 2016). Learning outcomes can be defined at the system level as in national qualification frameworks (NQFs), most of which are currently based on learning outcomes. Learning outcomes can be defined in qualification standards, curricula, learning programmes and assessment, although the last one is still uncommon. This thematic sub-category refers to the use of learning outcomes in these contexts and to development and use of modules or units of learning outcomes in VET curricula and programmes.
This thematic sub-category focuses on developing and updating all kinds of learning resources and materials, both for learners and for teachers and trainers (e.g. teachers handbooks or manuals), to embrace current and evolving content and modes of learning. These activities target all kinds of formats: hard copy and digital publications, learning websites and platforms, tools for learner self-assessment of progress, ICT-based simulators, virtual and augmented reality, etc.
This thematic sub-category covers all developments related to work-based learning (WBL) elements in VET programmes and apprenticeships which continue to be important in the policy agenda. It includes measures to stabilise the offer of apprenticeships, the implementation of the European framework for quality and effective apprenticeships, and using the EU on-demand support services and policy learning initiatives among the Member States. It also covers further expansion of apprenticeships and WBL to continuing VET (CVET), for transition to work and inclusion of vulnerable groups, and for improving citizens’ qualification levels.
European priorities in VET
VET Recommendation
- VET agile in adapting to labour market challenges
Osnabrück Declaration
- Resilience and excellence through quality, inclusive and flexible VET
Subsystem
Further reading
Country
Type of development
Cedefop, & ReferNet. (2025). New training guides and educational materials for SAEK schools based on certified occupational profiles: Greece. 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/48636