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"This is the future of VET - providing infrastructures, financial support and human capacity that build bridges between the world of education and the world of work"

James Calleja dirige el Centro Europeo de Desarrollo de la Formación Profesional (Cedefop), dependiente de la Comisión Europea. El objetivo de esta institución es la promoción y el desarrollo de la formación profesional y continua a escala comunitaria.

Cedefop celebra su 40 aniversario en 2015 planteando nuevos objetivos para el desarrollo de la formación profesional. Coincidiendo con esta fecha, Educaweb ha realizado esta entrevista que profundiza en los retos de la FP.

Which are the challenges the vocational training is facing in Europe?
 
Since the Copenhagen declaration in 2002 on enhanced cooperation in Europe on Vocational education and training (VET) many member states have seen enormous progress in this sector and more learners have benefited from a higher quality of VET and increased access to learning skills for employment. However, by no means can we claim that VET is a natural option to many Europeans. On the contrary, evidence shows that VET is still a second option or a forced choice as a sector of education. Therefore the challenges of European VET are mainly three:

- To ensure that VET programmes strike a balance between personal development and sectoral skills and that qualifications from any VET provision allows the individual to a wide range of possible job opportunities;

- To finance VET provision in such a way that both infrastructures (equipment, laboratories, work simulated environments, libraries etc…) and programmes  are adequately resourced to the highest levels;

- All European countries work towards achieving the Riga conclusions by 2020 namely that in VET provision quality assurance, access, work-based learning, teacher/trainers/mentors' professional development and the acquisition of key competences top every the VET national agenda.