"An increasing number of people today acquire qualifications in the field of higher education. Despite this educational expansion, many EU Member States sometimes have very high unemployment rates, also among young people with an academic qualification. At the same time, many companies in the EU are complaining about skilled labour shortage and about job applicants frequently not having suitable qualifications. To tackle these challenges effectively, education and training programmes need to be geared more strongly towards the specific qualification demands of companies. The educational reform steps taken in many Member States mainly focus on initial vocational education and training (IVET), however. In view of the far-reaching changes in the world of work due to globalisation and digitisation as well as increasing requirements made on employees, upskilling programmes should also be considered in the reform plans. To date the discourse in connection with higher qualification has been restricted to academic tertiary education. But hardly any discussions are held about vocational tertiary education – or higher VET. Here it would be necessary to establish higher VET as an equivalent supplement to academic tertiary education or enhance visibility of this sector, thus also providing qualifications of this sector with a higher degree of perception and appreciation. This is because a knowledge- and innovation-driven national economy needs both: graduates of study programmes with a focus on general education and an academic orientation as well as skilled workers who are highly qualified in their profession and guarantee the transfer of research findings to marketable products and services. One fundamental reason why higher VET has to date played a subordinate role in the educational policy discourse can be found in its heterogeneity. Academic tertiary education, which is perceived as being much more homogeneous, has a uniform qualification structure (bachelor, master, PhD) and common quality standards (i.e. Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance in the European Higher Education Area, ESG). In addition, academic qualifications are acquired at universities and other higher education institutions, which are generally known and which enjoy a high degree of prestige. All these “unifying elements” cannot be found in higher VET. Therefore no common understanding of higher VET has developed in many EU Member States, but also at the European level overall. The main aim of this project was to create more awareness of the significance of higher VET. In order to reach this aim it was necessary to increase the understanding of higher VET, show the charateristics of this sector and demonstrate how it works. This purpose is persued by the project's main product, i.e. the ""European Guidelines on Quality Assurance in Higher VET"", which are based on a precise definition of higher VET. The Guidelines also show which features are essential to assure the quality of this sector. On the one hand the Guidelines support players of higher VET in checking their own quality assurance measures and in improving them, if necessary; on the other hand they give all people outside higher VET an insight into this sector. Thus, the Guidelines contribute to a better understanding of higher VET and more appreciation of its qualifications.Five national organisations from AT, BE, FR, GE and GR with expertise in higher VET as well as a Eureopan organisation (UEAPME) worked together in this three-year-project to develop the products and raise more awareness of this subject matter by disseminating information about the projects and its deliverables. Methodologically the project was divided into four work phases: At the beginning the quality assurance mechanisms and systems of all partner countries were analysed on the basis of higher VET sample qualifications and later transnationally compared. This comparison formed the basis for the developement of the European Guidelines, which started in the second work phase. After a testing and dissemination phase in the third project stage the Guidelines were improved and presented during the final conference towards the end of the project. This conference also marked the launch of the ""European Network on Quality Assurance in Higher VET"", which is located at UEAPME and which should guarantee sustainability of the results also beyond the lifetime of this project. It is the aim to keep the subject of Higher VET on the educational policy agenda and to promote the use of the European Guidelines as well as develop them further."

With our project named “Exchanging Best Practices In Europe To Encourage Apprenticeship And Training In Bakery Sector “ Talents4bakery, we aim to exchange, transfer, and implement good practises, experiences and curricula among partner organisations to be able to encourage young people to be trained in Bakery sector starting from vocational high schools and colleges and to provide the current and future labour force to the Bakery Sector. Our primary aim is to examine the good practises in the partner countries and have a better understanding about Bakery trainings in the partner countires to check how to implement these examples in vocational schools and colleges. In order to provide required width in the spectrum of needed expertise we are planning to offer Bakery training as the following:Step 1: Guidlines for Basic Bakery Training in a digital eraStep 2: Redefining EU standards for Bakery training programmes (This study is going to be done with decisionmakers in the partner organisations) in partner countries and these redefined and upgraded standards are going to help us train the bakers of the future more professionally and contribute to the economic development of the country. We also see this project as working to support:• Vocational education which is being supported by our learning provision• Vocational education providers working with the Bakery sector• Labour force and learners (specifically young people) who would like to develop themselves or build a career in Bakery Sector.• Partner organisations who are responsible for vocational education provisionWe will focus on:1) To undertake a comparative analysis of how partners are conducting Bakery training vocational education to support young learners and labour force 2) To examine the examples about the delivery of Bakery training in partner countries and the published reports, research, studies about Bakery.3) To discuss with partners how to transfer Bakery trainings into vocational high schools and colleges in a gradual way starting from basic level.4) To reidentify the EU standards and systems with our partners and implement these standards and systems into our vocational education systems (on organisational and country basis). And we will be able to find out how equivalent these current and redefined standards with the sector needs.5) To start the process of implementing this basic Bakery training in the vocational schools and disseminate the activities in our countries with our network (all partners).For this project we created a partnership between Germany, Greek, Austria, Belgium and Turkey to contribute to the vocational education system at EU level while increasing recognisability of Bakery training in vocational education level (at vocational education schools and colleges), disseminate and ensure that it finds its equivalence at the EU standards. Our partners have strong expertise in the field of Bakery sector with project based and professional experience. They have training models, lesson plans, qualification frameworks, implementation labs and will provide research and promotion of the relationship among the VET schools, centres, companies and with other research departments and links with the sector representatives.

Background The project Blueprint for the Construction Industry gathers 3 EU umbrella sectorial organizations, along with 9 national sectorial representatives and 12 Vocational and Education Training providers (24 partners in total) from 12 EU countries with the aim of working together towards the development of a new sectorial strategic approach to cooperate on skills in the sector, and support a better matching between skill needs of companies and skills provided to workers by training centres.ObjectivesThe Skills Blueprint for the Construction Industry project aims at setting up a sustainable sectorial Alliance between key stakeholders in order to reduce skill gaps between the industry requirements and sectorial training provision, and also to contribute to support growth, innovation and competitiveness in the construction industry developing a sectoral skills strategy that will allow to better anticipate skill needs, addressing the current and future labour market shortages in the sector.ImplementationThe Construction Blueprint Project has a duration of 4 years, and is structured in different phases (denominated Work Packages -WPs-). Although these WPs are independent and have their own tasks and objectives, however, all of them are closely interconnected and co-exist at the same time. At this stage only WP2 has been finalised, since the other are initiated but whose finalisation is foreseen in the second half of the project, or are transversal WPs, ie. are implemented during the 4 years timeResultsAt this stage, the main results are: PESTLE Analysis, StatusQuo Report on Sectoral Skills, Strategic Roadmap and Action Plan, Interactive Map of good practices, SSA portal and website, LinkedIn group, all of them publicly available at https://constructionblueprint.eu/results/ (in English language)