Palestine: renewed commitment for better vocational education and training

Palestine renewed its full commitment to measure the effectiveness of the reforms in its education and training systems, in a lifelong learning perspective. In a meeting attended by ETF director Cesare Onestini, the country launched the 5th cycle (2019-20) of the Torino Process, a periodical assessment for education reforms.

The Palestinian Minister of Education and Higher Education, H.E. Dr Sabri Saidam, said that “the Torino Process can support exploring ways of making vocational education and training more attractive, including trough integrating vocational and training subjects in general education. Attractiveness”, he added, “also implies a change of mindset in the way vocational education is perceived in society”.

The Deputy Minister of Labour od Palestine, Dr Samer Salameh, said that “in the next ten years the Palestinian labour market will need more technicians, and this is why vocational education and training is a profitable investment. The Torino Process”, he added, “offers opportunities to learn also from other countries’ similar challenges”.

The ETF director, Cesare Onestini, highlighted that “the new Torino Process cycle’s approach includes comparing what is happening in the countries and learning from what works. Compared to the past, more focus should be put on solutions with the purpose of sharing them with others, to make the most of new ideas and innovative ways of addressing problems“.

What’s the Torino Process

Evidence is key to implementing education and training policies, and the ‘Torino Process’ is a way to make this happen in countries around the EU. The work starts with the involvement of each country’s most relevant authorities and stakeholders active in in education, training and employment – state authorities, public administration bodies, international organisations, employers and representatives of companies/private sector, and other relevant civil society actors.

Through their commitment and active engagement, countries can succeed in activities such as: Analysing the skills needed by adults all over their life to remain active in the labour market; Checking if the offer of vocational education satisfies the skills needed by enterprises; Verifying the quality of schools against minimum standards.

Changing in times of changes

Launched eight years by the ETF, the Torino Process has faced global trends consistently impacting the labour market and education systems – demographic shift, migration, digitalisation, climate change – and it has adapted to make sure that learning processes and employment opportunities throughout life are adaptive, too.

Compared to previous years, the revised assessment tool focuses on skills provision in a life-long learning perspective including all types of and processes of learning at all ages or moments of life cycle. Moreover, the Torino Process will aslo include a component of external assessment of the key-challenges the national education and training systems are facing in order to identify entry-points for systemic reforms.

What’s next

After the launch of the new 2019-20 cycle, countries will undertake participatory dialogues with all concerned parties, and steer the collection of evidence needed to have a clear view on the countries. Moreover, countries will dialogue with others at a regional level, offering important opportunity for peer learning and sharing of experience and best practice.

To conclude the exercise, the ETF will use findings to produce an assessment report, which will presented to countries for discussion. Through policy recommendations, countries will proceed nationally with follow-up actions and contribute to a valuable international community, discussing how to provide training responsive to trends and the future of skills – to the benefit of people.