Working together for better education and training in Israel

The Torino Process – a periodical assessment tool to measure the effectiveness of reforms in countries' education and training systems, in a lifelong learning perspective – is now at its 5^th edition (2019-20). On 19^th February the new cycle was launched in Israel in the premises of the European Union Delegation to Israel, at the presence of EU ambassador Emanuele Giaufret, ETF director Cesare Onestini, and members of the TVET committee.

The EU ambassador Emanuele Giaufret welcomed the launch as “what the ETF is doing in Israel is very much part of the relationship that EU and Israel have developed across the years, and it is right in the middle of a very strong bilateral cooperation”.

The ETF director, Cesare Onestini, added that the Torino Process in Israel is quite unique for two reasons: one is being able to contribute to the very lively dynamics that are going on in the country, and the second is to learn from new ideas that are being developed in the areas of entrepreneurship, qualifications, inclusion. “There is a lot of learning potential for the ETF from the Israeli experience”.

Florence Azran, chair of the TVET committee and Torino Process national coordinator, added that in Israel the Ministry of Education is in charge of more than 2 million students and the national budget is 55 billion shekels, which is the second highest budget after security. “This shows how education is considered as a priority for the Government”.

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; and much more.

Changing in times of changes

Launched eight years ago 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 lifelong learning perspective including all types of, and processes of, learning at all ages or moments of life-cycle. Moreover, the Torino Process now also includes a component of external assessment of the key-challenges the national education and training systems, in order to identify entry-points for systemic reforms.

What’s next

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

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.