Why are we doing Skills for Employability?

Skills for Employability is a twelve-country project that promotes internationalism within the vocational education and training sector across South East Europe (SEE) and the United Kingdom. The benefits of the project will be:

			skills development to support economic growth and a globally competitive Europe
			networks and long-term relationships to support the response of governments in SEE to the challenges of employability
			present the UK as one of the key partners in areas of enterprise, innovation and employment in SEE
			support the British Council’s vision for Europe – “Working together to build next generation Europe”

What do we want to achieve with Skills for Employability?

			Address long-term systemic challenges by aligning education and training provision with the needs of industry by engaging employers in the future of skills development
			A higher and more positive profile for the skills agenda
			Equip young people with relevant, transferable skills for employment in a global market
			Contribute to a culture of enterprise and innovation
			Support and develop European objectives for system reform

How will we achieve this?

			We create dialogues between policy-makers, employers and leaders of industry
			Regional policy dialogue workshops in 2007 and 2008 focussing on: national qualifications and credit frameworks, occupational standards and curricula development & quality assurance
			We run partnership projects in capacity building between UK and SEE institutions to work towards development in curriculum, quality assurance, National Vocational Qualifications Law implementation, national survey of the tourism and hospitality sector, teacher training, school management training and the transfer of best practice and mobility exchanges
			Cooperation with a number of state institutions and international development organisations who are concerned with increasing the employability of young people and their entrepreneurial skills through innovative curricula and stronger ties with employers. Our partners include the Ministry of Education and Science, The VET Centre, The Examinations Centre, The National Employment Agency, Netherlands Development Organisation, KulturKontakt and Lux Development.

In 2010/11 our focus will be on:

			Enhancing quality assurance in VET schools through developing a new coherent model of self-assessment of schools. The first model of self-assessment was introduced in Montenegro in 2005, and was based on an approach of arbitrary and non-mandatory surveys of individual performances. After a distance of 5 years and the experience on what really works, the model is up for a major revision with a view to building a more coherent, reliable and measurable system of self-assessment. The new model will also include templates for improvement planning and reporting and other tools which support the continuous quality assurance provision. The latest amendments to the education law passed in July 2010 prescribe mandatory self-assessment on a yearly basis, which presents a strong basis for the implementation of this project. British Council works with the Evaluation Department of the VET Centre on developing a publication “Quality Assurance: Internal Evaluation of VET Schools” which will be launched in March 2011 and piloted in 6 schools. A major study tour in the UK will be organised in mid February 2011 for senior policy makers, which will bring them up to date with the systems of QA practiced in this country. The study tour will comprise visits to regulatory institutions such as Ofsted and Ofqual, further education colleges and employers as well as workshops and seminars.
			Cooperation of business and VET. One of the conclusions of the National VET Conference held in March 2010 was that the current quality of VET and business cooperation should be improved. In order to identify the present barriers, as well as motivation and opportunities for working together in the future, a major SWOT workshop will be organised on 14th Dec 2010 with around 50 participants representing VET, business and policy. The key objectives of this workshop will be to establish facts, adopt an Action Plan based on a consensus, and form a working group for the development of the manual of best practice of employer engagement in the VET. The joint work is expected to expand the platform for cooperation and improve its overall quality, while on the individual and institutional levels, we hope to enable skills and tools for more successful business negotiations and relationship building. A launching conference is planned by Feb-Mar 2011. Both activities in 2010/11 are supported by Lux Development.