Outcomes of YOUVET – training for YOUng campaigners for VET
The development of Vocational Education and Training (VET) in Europe is nowadays a recurring topic in European debates. Institutions, policymakers and other stakeholders are investing many efforts to share their visions and discuss the best direction towards which European VET should progress.
Youth unemployment, high rates of youths Not in Education, Employment or Training (NEETs) and changes in the labour market due to the consequences of the economic and financial crisis, have drawn attention to the role of Vocational Education Training in society, its value and its capacity to channel students from education to work. Whilst the world is changing rapidly, VET in Europe is facing a hard time to find its correct role: in many cases VET is still considered as the second option and not as valid as general secondary education. It is often not seen as a viable option to academic studies, having equal standing. VET students are often socially discriminated, and the huge differences between VET schools and academic secondary schools continue preserving a classist society divided between those who “know”, and those who do practical jobs.
Sadly OBESSU still observes little involvement of school students and their unions in these critical debates. It is not at all uncommon that debates on how acquiring new skills for the fast changing labour market or developing VET and making it competitive and up-to-date, are held without taking into consideration school students opinions, expectations and demands. Therefore decisions taken, meant to inspire future policies in VET, risk not only to be undemocratic, but also to be addressed in the wrong way, for instance following an interest which shares nothing with the educational purposes of VET.
OBESSU has always been aware of the full capacity of students and their unions in identifying the major areas for improvement in Vocational Education and Training and creating a pragmatic definition of Quality in Education that European Member States should ensure.
YOUVET online training
YOUVET – training for young campaigners, with its four week online training and three day on-site training in Brussels, determined a greater chance for OBESSU and its Member Organisations to give comprehensive answers to pending questions in VET as well as effective solutions to the main problems VET faces in Europe.
Through several months work, the OBESSU Working Group on VET – Daniele Di Mitri (OBESSU Board), Giuseppina Tucci (UdS), Musa Jallow (SAKKI), Ignas Dirma (LMS) and Triin Roos (ESCU) with the support of Tiia Meuronen (OBESSU secretariat) – shaped an online-course: a deep and complete training about VET for more than 15 young activists. The nine different online sessions covered some theoretical aspects of VET, such as Governance of VET, major policies regulating it, main challenges in apprenticeships and participation and involvement of VET students in decision making. In addition, the online training was designed to develop the personal capacities of the participants which included lobbying, campaigning, fundraising and organising events. The participants interacted online for 30 days between February and March 2013 on the online learning tool Lore.com, and took part in different courses, read papers, had online conversations and commented on each other’s contributions.
YOUVET on-site training in Brussels
On 8th March, all the results of the online training were collected, as the participants flew to Brussels to start the second part of YOUVET: the on-site training. The aim of this final meeting was to create an Action Plan for each of the Student Organisations taking part in YOUVET, and to adopt the OBESSU campaign “Claim your Voice! Stand up for VET!” at national level during 2013.
The three day training was composed of, first of all, the debriefing of the workshops conducted online to let the participants evaluate the work they did, and discuss together some of the key concepts, words and definitions. The debriefing part was followed by practical exercises such as the “Scenario games” and the “Action Simulator”, to make the participants to put into practice the knowledge acquired during the online training. The “putting theory into practice” part of the training was fundamental, so as to give the participants the competences to apply what they had learned in their national realities.
The outcomes: Action Plans about VET
The cornerstone of the YOUVET on-site training took place during the second day when the Action Plans were drafted: participants deeply reflected on initiatives, events or actions that their organisation would take in the frame of the OBESSU Claim Your Voice campaign. They considered all the aspects of the future action such as the target group, the smart goals, how to fundraise, media coverage and other practical issues to make the action plan as comprehensive as possible.
The school student unions present in Brussels were SAKKI (Finland), EEO (Denmark), MAKOSZ (Romania), SUSKA (Slovakia), ESCU (Estonia), DOS (Slovenia) and UDS (Italy). They all drafted personalised action plans for their organisations which focused on a number of specific issues of VET such as the lack of free transportation for VET students, the need for investments for school infrastructures and lack of student participation in schools.
The plans drafted are going to be discussed in the following months within the national organisations, in order to make them feasible with the organisations’ overall work-plans, whereas implementation of the action plans will take place by the end of the year 2013. The working group on VET will coordinate the whole process by giving support and guidance to the newly trained VET experts, in order to make these actions reality.
Debates with experts
Besides concluding the online-training and creating Action Plans, the on-site training organised a study visit to the European Parliament, and two political debates with external stakeholders. The first debate was focused on the “Future of VET”: the trajectories and the scenarios VET is walking towards. The discussion was joined by Alison Crabb, the Debuty Head of Unit B2 – Vocational training and adult education of the DG EAC of the European Commission, answering several questions asked by the VET activists present. The second debate was about the recurring topic of VET and employment, apprenticeship and recent measures in that field. This time two young guest speakers took part in the heated debate: James Higgings, responsible of Youth Unemployment from the European Youth Forum and Robert Plummer, social advisor from Business Europe.
After YOUVET
The YOUVET training was the beginning for the work done at national level for improving VET in Europe. The training is over, but the participants are now in their home countries with the Action Plans they did during the training. The next step is to implement these action plans at the national level through different actions, campaigns and policy work during 2013. These actions will tackle the problems and issues of the different VET systems across Europe and together improve the European perspective towards Vocational Education and Training.
Claim your Voice! Stand up for VET!
Written by Daniele Di Mitri
