Armenia's skills reform at a turning point: How institutions are catching up with ambition

Armenia is in the process of reshaping the institutions that govern education and work. After years of building policy frameworks, the country is now undertaking structural changes that could bring greater coherence to a system long fragmented across ministries, agencies, and training providers. 

During a recent mission to Yerevan, the European Training Foundation (ETF) held discussions with national stakeholders, from ministries to research institutions and development partners, that pointed to progress, but also to persistent gaps in implementation. Across conversations it was implicit that the agenda is strong, but delivery capacity must now catch up with ambition. 

Arayik Navoyan, director of the Armenian Centre for Education and Management and one of the most closely involved national experts in the Torino Process, sees this transition in both its promise and its complexity. 

“The current stage of skills reform in Armenia can be defined as a shift from policy design and legislative adoption towards implementation” 

A new governance architecture for VET 

One of the most significant developments is the planned establishment of a new public body under the Ministry of Education, Science, Culture and Sports, which will consolidate functions currently dispersed between the National Centre for VET Development and the National Training Fund. 

The new body will also be responsible for work-based learning, recognition of prior learning, and the validation of non-formal and informal learning, bringing together key elements of adult upskilling and reskilling that have so far operated across separate structures. 

 This responds to a long-standing structural issue: fragmentation. Education, labour, and implementation actors have often worked in parallel rather than as part of a coordinated system. 

The ETF's recent Rapid Education Diagnosis for Armenia, published under the Support to Education Reforms and Skills (SER) programme, , identified "structural complexity and coordination" as a key governance challenge and recommended the establishment of "formal coordination frameworks at all levels" to improve reform implementation. The new structure seeks to address some of these challenges by bringing together ministries, employers and social partners within a more integrated governance model.

As Navoyan notes, “the country lacks a holistic approach to skills development… reform agendas in the education and labour sectors are not sufficiently coordinated.” 

Capacity constraints and limited accountability mechanisms remain central concerns, particularly as new structures take on broader responsibilities. These reforms are taking place within a wider public administration reform agenda. 

Armenia is introducing a new strategic management system designed to shift from traditional document-centred planning towards data-driven, results-oriented governance. As part of this process, the government is developing a series of cross-sector strategies covering areas including: s part of this process, the government is developing a series of cross-sector strategies covering human capital and welfare, economic transformation and sustainable development, territorial and infrastructure development, justice sector reform, public administration reform, and security and foreign policy.

The Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs is simultaneously reviewing its internal organisation, including plans to separate policy and operational functions, with closer integration of delivery actors such as the Unified Social Service (USS).  

The EU budget support: A new register for cooperation 

Building on a long-standing cooperation framework, the EU and Armenia recently signed a new multi-sector budget support programme. The programme is aligned with priorities set out in the EU's Resilience and Growth Plan for Armenia and the EU-Armenia Strategic Agenda, both of which place strong emphasis on human capital development, skills and employment.

The agreement, signed during the EU Commissioner’s visit to Yerevan, also includes components related to both employment and vocational education and training, with a particular focus on work-based learning, teachers' professional development and active labour market programmes.  

Linking reform to labour market reality 

Efforts to strengthen the link between education and employment are gaining pace, particularly through work-based learning and dual VET. These approaches are expanding gradually, with more institutions and professions involved each year. 

At the same time, questions remain about how effectively the system captures outcomes. As Navoyan points out, “there is no… independent tracer study system to measure the effectiveness of skills provision.” 

Without systematic tracking of graduates, it remains difficult to assess whether reforms are delivering results. Recognising this challenge, the ETF began supporting efforts to strengthen graduate tracking in Armenia in November 2025 through a workshop introducing tools and approaches for monitoring the employment outcomes of VET graduates. While employer engagement is increasing, particularly in programme design, sustaining that involvement will require clearer incentives and more stable cooperation frameworks. 

The Torino Process and its contribution 

The Torino Process monitors how effectively education and training systems deliver on national and international commitments to learners and other stakeholders in support of lifelong learning. In Armenia, it has provided a structured framework for dialogue, helping policymakers and practitioners assess progress, identify gaps and build a shared evidence base for reform. Rather than prescribing solutions, it has supported a more informed and participatory approach to decision-making. 

As Navoyan observes, it has offered “a comprehensive and specialised platform… serving as a solid basis for designing and implementing targeted actions.” 

The current cycle places particular emphasis on lifelong learning, a theme that resonates across virtually every conversation about skills reform in the country. 

However, the debate about lifelong learning has its own challenges. Officials and researchers across ministries are wrestling with a practical problem: formal education systems operate on timelines measured in years, while the skills that employers need are shifting in months.  

The National Institute of Labour and Social Research (NILSR), currently being transformed into a new welfare and employment research body provisionally known as WISE, is developing labour market forecasting methodologies to provide a stronger empirical basis for education and skills policy. 

The institute is piloting sector-based approaches in cooperation with the American University of Armenia, with the aim of feeding results into education planning processes. 

At the same time, ESCO, the European classification of occupations and skills, has been translated into Armenian.

Regional programmes and on-the-ground work 

Beyond the bilateral policy dialogue, the ETF's engagement with Armenia takes several concrete forms. The regional programme supporting education reforms and skills in the Eastern Partnership (SER), aims to enhance the efficiency, quality, equity, equality and relevance of education systems, and to make positive, long-lasting and sustainable changes in education in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine. 

In Armenia, this support includes a Rapid Education Diagnosis (RED) covering the full cycle from pre-school to higher education, as well as a functional review of education governance.

Armenia's VET colleges are also active participants in the ETF's European Network for Vocational Excellence (ENE), which brings together institutions from across partner countries for peer exchange, shared standards, and international visibility. The French-Armenian VET college and several regional state colleges are among those engaged. An Erasmus+ project, ImproVet, complements this network work with on-site capacity development. 

Peer learning activities on active labour market policies are another regular feature of the cooperation. Two representatives from Armenia — one from the Ministry of Labour and one from the USS — recently participated in an event in Bari, where they compared approaches with counterparts from other countries.  

The UNDP, a longstanding partner on active employment programmes in Armenia, similarly sees value in exposure to models from smaller, reform-oriented countries. 

 "For Armenia, something like Estonia would be a good comparison," noted Karine Simonyan of UNDP. "Countries that have shared some background but have moved further — there you can find something to build on." 

Next steps towards moving from reform to delivery 

The outcome of the recent elections is expected to sustain Armenia’s current trajectory of engagement with European partners, including in the field of skills and employment reform. 

What emerges is a system in transition. Progress is visible in legislation, institutional restructuring, and pilot programmes, but it does not yet translate evenly into practice. Coordination across institutions, capacity constraints, and financing gaps continue to shape implementation. 

Navoyan’s conclusion points to the central priority ahead: “The most critical priority… is to strengthen capacities across the VET system, while developing a clear and comprehensive accountability framework.” 

Having determined what needs to be reformed, the question for Armenia now is whether institutions can deliver on what has already been set in motion, and how quickly those reforms can translate into tangible outcomes. 

For the ETF, the work continues on multiple fronts simultaneously: monitoring, advising, connecting, and documenting. What the current round of institutional visits suggests is that Armenia is in the middle of a genuine transition, one where the distance between intention and action is slowly, if not always evenly, narrowing. 

The ETF supports Armenia as part of its Eastern Partnership engagement. Further information on ETF's work in Armenia is available at etf.europa.eu. This article was originally drafted on 19/06/2026 and updated on 04/08/2026.