As the current strategy will expire in 2020, this provides an opportunity to prepare for the design of the next strategy by drawing lessons from current gaps; in particular, it will be important to: i) identify national strategies and reform efforts having a link to skills development (including Economic Reform Programme and key economic sectors' development strategies), and the nature of this link; ii) ground the strategy in a clear vision for skills in Montenegro based on these links, but also a clear vision of the place and priority purpose of VET within the education and training system; iii) broaden the strategic planning to the whole VET/skills development sector in order to mirror and back the economic development strategic priorities of the government; iv) set safeguards for this new strategy to explicitly serve the needs of the labour market (by better use of relevant data); v) make the VET strategy more forward-looking and impact-oriented, including through the introduction of outcomes/impact objectives, targets and indicators in a performance assessment framework. A costing methodology should be developed and agreed to ensure accurate and sustainable budget planning and execution.

Several measures could help reduce the gap between structure and volume of demand and supply. These include a proper targeting of economic and social needs in the education and training provision, and measures for stimulating demand and job take-up. It requires accurate knowledge of the situation and adequate tools. To start with, the discrepancy between existing occupations and actual job vacancies, highlighted by the national employment agency, calls for revising the structure of occupations that serves as reference for designing or offering training. Longer term, there is a need for tools for more precise analysis of skills needs, but also anticipation is needed to harness the VET system's responsiveness. Further capacity building of public institutions and proper resourcing is required to play an effective role in addressing the labour market and skills imbalances.

Keeping and reinforcing the focus on the development of key competences throughout the education, training and employment programmes will be an important step to regain the trust of employers in the quality of future employees, and as a more general consequence to public provision.

Maintaining and expanding the financial mechanism of individual incentives to engage in in-demand occupations is a safe channel to prepare young people with the necessary skills. In addition, as previously described, some financing instruments have been created to encourage young people to choose training pathways corresponding to the in-demand occupations, and this measure needs to be continued, perhaps expanded. This could also be combined with priority development of dual education in these occupations.

In complement, the further development of dual education, as the main innovation within the VET system, with a proper mechanism for monitoring and evaluating impact, is a promising way forward: not only does it smooth the transition from school to work, but beyond individual cases, it also fosters engagement of the private sector in the training provision, and in management of the system more broadly. This is internationally recognised as a key condition for success.

In the short to medium term, further developing the system for non-formal and informal learning could help fill occupations that do not attract people with the required skills. More long term, the expansion of adult education provision and the systematisation of targeted active labour market measures combined with social protection should become a national priority, consequently better resourced from the state budget, given the demographic situation of the country.

An expansion and redesign of the career guidance services is recommended and a coherent national system should be developed, including adult guidance. The current services must be better aligned and coordinated. Career guidance needs to start at an earlier stage and should also be embedded in the curriculum, with an emphasis on career management skills.

Clear and realistic targets for apprenticeships should be set and additional measures are needed to boost apprenticeship supply. The existing quality challenges of traineeships in VET should be addressed immediately, drawing upon the recently proposed Quality Improvement Plan for traineeships in IVET.

Further research, analysis and more frequent monitoring is needed with regard to the large horizontal skills mismatch of VET graduates, including comparison with graduates from apprenticeships and general and higher education.

Current VET fields and branches should be reviewed to ascertain whether they correspond to current and anticipated labour market needs.

The two systems of IVET and CVET should not remain separate but should be more closely linked, or even dovetailed. Such a concept could offer people new and attractive career perspectives, as well as making VET more attractive.

A more systematic approach could start in key sectors of the economy as well as in the fields which suffer most from the traditional VET image problem.