Conference launching the EU- funded project ”Support for Vocational Education and Training in BiH 4“ was held on Thursday in Ilidža near Sarajevo. The project, will build on training and education initiatives that have been implemented in Bosnia and Herzegovina with EU support since 1998. The EU provided close to 1,5 meuro for this project which will run until January 2013.
A vocational education and training system that meets local and international market requirements and supports appropriate labour skills that correspond to labour market is a key element in economic development.
„The European Union has invested about 11 million Euros in the reform of vocational education and training to date,” said Natalia Dianiskova, Head of the Operations Section for Social Development, Civil Society and Cross-Border Cooperation at the EU Delegation, adding that the EU considers this „a significant contribution and help for this country“.
Dianiskova said she hopes that institutions in Bosnia and Herzegovina will continue to benefit from the results already achieved in this field and that more will be achieved. She added that the situation now is quite different compared to the beginning of reforms more than a decade ago because there is a strong education department in the Ministry for Civil Affairs, as well as a VET Department in the Agency for Pre-school, Primary and Secondary Education, and laws such as the Basic Framework Qualification for Life-Long Learning have been enacted and are being implemented.
„The time has come to take a major step forward and implement the results of previous projects systematically in the whole country,” Dianiskova said. „Perhaps the greatest challenge is to forge a connection between education and the labour market.“
The EU VET 4 project will support institutional and capacity building in the Vocational Education and Training System in Bosnia and Herzegovina, namely: the VET department of the Agency for Pre- Primary, Primary and Secondary Education, the Ministries of Education, pedagogical institutes and schools, in line with EU Initiatives for enhanced Cooperation and Quality of Vocational Education and Training in EU Member states. The support will strengthen the vertical and horizontal mobility of students in the BiH vocational education system in regard to European education.
Esma Hadžagić, Assistant Minister in charge of the education sector at the BiH Ministry of Civil Affairs, stressed that the project continues the ongoing reform of Secondary Vocational Education, and that the EU VET 4 project has three main groups of expected results.
„The first concerns the National Qualifications Framework and assessment of qualifications at Secondary Education level. The second concerns institution building through capacity building at the VET department in the Agency for Pre-Primary, Primary and Secondary Education and enabling the Agency to take over the tasks assigned to it by the Framework Law on Vocational Education and Training. The third concerns implementation of the VET Framework Law on Secondary Education in Bosnia and Herzegovina“, Hadžagić said.
She said an action plan and a road map to accelerate the reform of Vocational Education and Training will be drawn up.
„With this project, we are moving forward several steps at a time in the sense of European integration in Secondary Vocational Education“, Hadžagić said. She added that in this field preparation for reforms in Bosnia and Herzegovina has been better then in other countries in the region.
