Moldova 2024

Key takeaways

The 2024 Torino Process monitoring results for Moldova highlight both progress and persistent challenges in VET. Access to initial VET remains an area of moderate performance, and young learners continue to enrol in these programmes in reasonable numbers. However, CVET is still facing significant difficulties in attracting adult learners. These challenges are partly due to the limited reach and delivery capacity of the provider network, despite a supportive legislative framework. Addressing these capacity issues will be key to expanding participation and making VET more inclusive for adults.

VET programmes show a good degree of alignment with current labour market needs, offer practical training opportunities, and are supported by accessible career guidance. As a result, the system performs well in terms of learner participation and graduation, and many graduates transition directly into the workforce. However, employment outcomes remain modest, suggesting that these initial job placements may not consistently lead to stable or well-matched employment. The emigration of skilled workers and limited job opportunities for graduates are likely contributing factors. In addition, while programmes address immediate labour market demands, they are less focused on preparing learners for long-term challenges such as the digital and green transitions.

Resource limitations also continue to pose a barrier. While there are no acute shortages, the quality of learning materials and the effective use of financial and human resources vary widely across the network. Strengthening internal quality assurance, improving data use, and deepening employer engagement will be essential for building a more resilient and future-ready VET system.

Access to learning

Monitoring in the area of access to and participation to learning helps countries assess the extent to which initial VET, continuing VET and other learning opportunities are accessible and attractive to all learners, regardless of their individual backgrounds or reasons for participating. The data also reflects how well learners can expect to progress through and graduate from these learning opportunities.

Opportunities for lifelong learning: access and participation

The 2024 Torino Process monitoring results for Moldova reveal uneven results in access and attractiveness: while initial VET remains moderately strong, continuing VET continues to struggle to engage and meet the needs of adult learners.

The lower system performance in this area is driven largely by challenges in attracting adult learners to continuing VET, despite a favourable legal framework. The network of providers remains small and under-resourced, limiting its reach. Measures to promote access to initial VET tend to focus primarily on specific groups, such as vulnerable youth, rather than on making VET broadly appealing to all prospective learners.

Although regulatory conditions are in place, the continuing VET system lacks the delivery capacity to match these ambitions. In contrast, Moldova performs better than many other countries in providing broader adult learning opportunities beyond formal VET, supported by clear regulations that recognise formal, non-formal, and informal learning as part of a lifelong learning strategy.

A system strength lies in the flexibility it offers learners to switch between general and vocational pathways, with Moldova outperforming most countries in this respect. However, progression to higher levels of general education remains more difficult for VET graduates. As a result, the majority of learners tend to enter the labour market after graduation rather than continuing their studies.

While Moldova’s VET system performs relatively well in ensuring flexible pathways within secondary education and in providing diverse adult learning opportunities beyond VET, its continuing VET system remains limited in scope and capacity. Unlocking its full potential will require targeted investments to strengthen the provider network and expand participation among adult learners. Efforts to improve vertical progression pathways from VET to higher education would also help broaden the educational and career horizons of learners.

The Torino Process is a regular review of national systems of vocational education and training as well as adult education. It is designed to analyse the ways in which national VET systems (including adult education) address the challenges of human capital development in a lifelong learning perspective. It was established by the European Training Foundation (ETF) in 2010 and has been carried out in partner countries in Southeastern Europe, Turkey, Eastern Europe, Central Asia and the Southern and Eastern Mediterranean ever since.

Monitoring in the context of the Torino Process describes the extent to which countries deliver on their commitments to learners in support of their learning through life (lifelong learning - LLL) in three major areas of policy and system performance: access to learning, quality of learning, and system organisation.

Quality of learning

Quality and relevance of learning is the area of monitoring that identifies how successfully the VET system provides basic skills and key competences to both young and adult learners. It highlights the relevance of VET programmes to the world of work and how effectively VET graduates transition into the labour market. Additionally, it monitors efforts to promote excellence across key domains, including pedagogy, professional development, programme content, governance, and social inclusion, as well as the openness of the VET system to innovation in response to the evolving needs of learners and labour markets.

Lifelong learning outcomes: quality and relevance, excellence and innovation

In 2024, Moldova’s VET system continues to provide a similar level of quality and relevance in skills and competences to both young and adult learners. This reflects a system-wide commitment to ensuring balanced provision across age groups. In line with its strategic priority to support a smooth transition into employment, Moldova’s VET programmes are more responsive to current labour market demands than to long-term challenges such as the green and digital transitions. While themes like sustainability and digitalisation are gradually being introduced, they remain less prominent in the curricula than more immediate economic needs.

The VET system supports participation and graduation well and provides learners with opportunities to gain exposure to the world of work. Career guidance is generally up to date and accessible, and there are established connections between training providers and labour market actors. However, these strengths do not yet translate into consistently strong employment outcomes. Employability remains the weakest area of system performance, suggesting that further efforts are needed to improve how VET qualifications align with real job opportunities, especially for adult learners.

Centres of Excellence represent a promising step towards embedding quality and innovation more firmly into Moldova’s VET system. These centres are designed to lead improvements in teaching, programme content, and institutional governance. While they are starting to fulfil this role, excellence in pedagogy and innovation in practice are not yet widespread across the wider network of VET providers.

VET in Moldova performs well in ensuring equal quality of provision for different learner groups and is increasingly attuned to labour market needs. However, employability outcomes remain modest, and the integration of green and digital themes still needs to deepen. Centres of Excellence are helping drive innovation and improvement, but more consistent adoption of good practices across the system is needed to boost outcomes for all learners.

System organisation

System organisation is the area of monitoring that captures performance across various domains of management and administration. It examines whether practitioners and leaders have access to data and evidence to support informed decision-making, the level of stakeholder involvement in VET governance, the quality and capacity of staff in leadership positions, and the degree of internationalisation. Additionally, monitoring the allocation of human and financial resources to the VET system helps assess whether these resources effectively support teaching, training, and learning.

System organisation: management and resourcing

In 2024, system performance in Moldova’s VET sector remains uneven, particularly in areas related to data availability and the effective use of resources. While national-level data collection is regular and broadly adequate for internal planning, Moldova continues to face challenges with the availability of reliable, internationally comparable data. This limits the ability to benchmark progress and fully align national policies with international standards.

Stakeholder involvement in VET governance shows moderate strength. While communication with external actors is frequent, the active participation of employers in system steering remains limited—despite being an ongoing priority for development. Strengthening this link could have a direct positive impact on aligning training more closely with labour market needs and improving graduate employability.

The recent establishment of the Agency for Quality Assurance in Education and Research is a notable step forward. Its mandate and ongoing activities have already contributed to improvements in quality assurance and public accountability, helping to enhance the credibility and appeal of VET. Moldova also performs relatively well in terms of the internationalisation of VET, although the internal quality assurance capacity of providers still varies.

Funding for VET in Moldova is relatively stable, with no widespread shortages reported in the current round of monitoring. However, the quality of learning materials, infrastructure, and leadership remains a concern. The effectiveness of resource deployment—rather than availability—is now the key issue. Continued investments in quality assurance and professional development, combined with better use of existing resources and improved employer engagement, will be essential to ensure sustainable improvement.

Promoting access and participation in opportunities for lifelong learning

Supporting quality and relevance of lifelong learning

Index of system performance

International comparability of performance results

In addition to presenting information on system performance, the Torino Process monitoring also considers how comparable a country’s results are to those of others, the extent to which the results might be affected by bias, and how self-critical the country is when reporting on its own performance. This is made possible by a methodology that keeps detailed records of the evidence used to generate each country’s results—including where the data come from and how they were collected. Moldova is no exception.

In this round of monitoring, the results for Moldova results are considered fairly comparable to those of other countries and slightly above the international average, much higher than in 2023. However, the results also show that Moldova’s data remain more prone to bias than those of many peers. At the same time, the self-assessment offered by national authorities is balanced—avoiding both excessive praise and overly critical views. This kind of measured reporting contributes to a more realistic picture of the VET system and offers a useful basis for further improvement.