Life long learning is a key element of today’s world. Life-long learning is a concept that captures the development of ‘skills for life’ as well as the opportunity and possibility to access education and training opportunities at any stage in life, and in many diverse ways. Why both ‘skills for life’ and ‘access to education and training’ are important? The structure of the labour market, the speed that is today embodied in the development of professions, and especially the speed of technical evolution requires the attitude of people to learn constantly and apply skills in different settings.

However this is not something which is immediately captured by traditional schools. A revision of content of curriculum, together with the revision of methodologies and competencies of teachers are necessary to improve schools and bring them to meet the requests of today’s economies. School development is a concept that embraces the ability of a school to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of delivery of training, achieving a quality standard and constantly adapt it to the needs of students, communities and world of work.

VET schools often suffer from being perceived as ‘not up’ to the development of the requests of the labour market, and not to provide enough good services for diverse clients from youngsters to adults, employed and unemployed. Various initiatives in the region have brought back the attention on VET and its strategic importance for the development and social welfare of a community and of a nation. In this framework ETF is promoting an initiative on school development towards life-long learning since 2009 in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyz Republic and Tajikistan; Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan are also participating joining regional activities. The initiative looks exactly into the dimensions of ‘skills-for-life’ as well as the concept of opening up school services and move to a more diverse and ad-hoc delivery of education and training. What is needed to develop schools? What are the factors that enable schools or prevent schools from becoming more efficient and effective? There are three set of areas that the initiative is covering: a) The legal and institutional framework. b) The participation of stakeholders both at the national and the local level. c) The quality of the school and its improvement. So far the initiative has covered the collection of evidence (year 1 2009 a survey covering 30% of VET providers in the 3 countries has been conducted, as well as focus groups and interviews with social partners, policy makers and school directors, staff and students), and international peer learning (in 2010 study visits in EU countries have show cased the EU experience with social partnership and self-assessment as a mean to work on quality at the school level). In 2011 the initiative will propose a capacity building program at national level on quality management and the development of national papers that will contribute to the policy agenda in the VET sector. The initiative brings together all stakeholders (policy makers, social partners, VET providers) into a discussion which has the objective to increase participation and ownership of policy making on this important topic.