Head of Area Enhanced Cooperation in VET and Lifelong Learning Mara Brugia has been appointed to the post of Deputy Director by Cedefop’s Governing Board. Ms Brugia will take up her new duties on 1 September 2014. She will replace outgoing Deputy Director Christian Lettmayr who is retiring at the end of August.
Born in Perugia, Italy, Ms Brugia joined Cedefop in 1994 and rose through the ranks to become Head of Area in 2004. She has been managing teams of experts working in European VET policy analysis, the common European tools and principles for education and training, and adult and work-based learning with a specific focus on apprenticeship-type learning. She served as Acting Deputy Director from November 2012 to October 2013. Ms Brugia holds a university degree in Economics and a Master’s Degree in Economics, Politics and Law of the European Union.
Cedefop Director James Calleja welcomed Ms Brugia’s appointment saying that he is looking forward to a fruitful cooperation with her.
Attachments: EN Press release.

Guiding principles on professional development of trainers in VET are a contribution of the European Commission, Cedefop and the respective thematic working group to the objective set in the Bruges communiqué (Council of the European Union; European Commission, 2010) of collecting good practice and developing guiding principles on the changing roles, competences and professional development of VET teachers and trainers. More...

 Early findings of a Europe-wide Cedefop study of the effect of vocational education and training (VET) on the dropout rate reveal that this effect is largely positive.
In countries where vocational pathways account for a large share of education and training, rates of early school leaving are below the EU target for 2020 (10%). Conversely, in countries where VET lags behind, the dropout rate is higher than 10%; in some cases, significantly so.
The study also addresses the lack of commonly accepted definition of early leavers from vocational education and training. Data at EU level and in many countries do not accurately track young people as they leave and re-enter learning environments and/or the labour market.The study has found that over 97% of early leavers are dropouts, with the remainder being young people who never start post-compulsory education and training.
It also found that 1 in 5 dropouts eventually achieve upper secondary qualifications, with 77% doing so within three years. The findings were discussed last week at an expert workshop organised by Cedefop in Thessaloniki. More...

By Ruth Sarrazin. More people worldwide are working in the informal than in the formal sector. In this interview Dr Richard Walther, senior consultant with the French Development Agency (AFD), tells us what it means to work in the informal economy, why investment in the sector is necessary to overcome the poverty of the developing countries, and how vocational training systems should be reformed in order to meet the needs of the sector. More...

Guiding principles on professional development of trainers in VET are a contribution of the European Commission, Cedefop and the respective thematic working group to the objective set in the Bruges communiqué (Council of the European Union; European Commission, 2010) of collecting good practice and developing guiding principles on the changing roles, competences and professional development of VET teachers and trainers. More...

By Sun Xiaochen. How can China launch a manned spaceship but can't produce high-quality kitchen knives? The question was raised by members of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference earlier this year and triggered a heated debate in China's education system, where experts and officials urged the development of modern vocational education to ease the imbalance between the labor supply and the huge market demand for technical talents.
"There is an urgent need to reform our current education system, which has been struggling to provide high-quality talents with skills and knowledge that meet the demand at the production frontline," Lu Xin, China's deputy minister of education, said at the recent China Development Forum 2014. More...

A trainer is a skilled worker who introduces newly recruited employees to the company, provides training to co-workers as part of the job or mentors apprentices.

Cedefop and the European Commission jointly coordinate a thematic working group on the professional development of trainers in vocational education and training (VET), which was launched in 2012. Members of the group come from ministries, national bodies and training and research centres in the Member States.

The group aims to identify examples of effective policies and practice and to consider how policies can support vocational trainers in the workplace with:

(a) their role and tasks;
(b) the competences that they need;
(c) ways of validating the competences they acquire and
(d) opportunities to keep their knowledge, skills and competence up-to-date.

The outcomes of the work of the group will contribute to European cooperation on vocational education and training (the Bruges Communiqué) and will be made available on this website. [more]

Contact Details:   Irina Jemeljanova .

 Italy has high numbers of young people participating in initial vocational education and training compared to the EU average. According to indicators compiled by Cedefop (the European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training), in 2012, 60% of all upper secondary students in Italy were vocational students, above the EU average of 50.3% and higher than in Germany (48.6%) and France (44.6%).
There is growing evidence that young people on high-quality apprenticeships and internships are more likely to acquire useful skills and attitudes to find suitable work and it seems from the data that upper secondary vocational graduates have better job prospects than general education graduates. The employment rate of upper secondary vocational graduates aged 20 to 34 in Italy is 74.6%, some 7.8 percentage points higher than for upper secondary graduates of the same age from general education. More...