Establishment of the European Alliance, that aims to promote the effective forms of the vocational studies – Apprenticeship, was initiated from Leipzig, in July 2013./ during the competition “WorldSkills” /
The opinions about development of apprenticeships, formation of the Alliance and its role and purpose were announced by the German Federal y the German Federal Minister for Education and Research, Johanna Wanka, by Commissioners Androulla Vassiliou (Education, Culture, Multilingualism and Youth) and László Andor (Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion). They indicated strong interests to reaching the goal of the Alliance for apprenticeships regarding to rethinking of education in youth employment package.
Role and Purposes of the Alliance
Union of the interested parties in development of the apprenticeships – including employment and educational organizations, public and private sectors, Chamber of Commerce and Industry, providers of the vocational studies, and social partnership institutions and European Commission.
As it is conceived by the founders, the Alliance should contribute to enhancement of the education quality and increase the number of its students through the Europe, also transformation of the existed views about the apprenticeship and modernization of it.
Considering the changed economic and social conditions, apprenticeship intends to provide smooth transition from education to employment. It ensures effective conditions for acquiring the required skills in workplace. The education in the form of the apprenticeships is beneficial not only for students, also for the government, society and employees.
As experience has shown, the countries with a strong work – based learning system have a much lower level of unemployment among young people, compared to the countries where this type of the system has not been properly recognized. According to it, improvement of the apprenticeship quality has been becoming one of the priorities for the EU politics, in order to address the acute problem of the unemployment among young people reach the unprecedented level in the recent years.
Based on these circumstances, European Alliance plans to propagate the benefits of the modern forms of apprenticeships and promotion concepts will be based on its real benefits. In order to achieve the goal, besides the international and recourses partner countries, the Alliance aims to mobilize the capacity of private sectors. The apprenticeship can be improved and developed through involvement and investments of companies and support of the government for these initiatives.
In order to coordinate and facilitate initiatives for formation of the apprenticeship with successful schemes and types three strands of action are highlighted by the alliance:
1. reformation of the apprenticeship system/institute;
2. propagation of benefits of the apprenticeships;
3.determination of its recourses and sources of funding.
The alliance hopes the all interested parties will be actively involved in these processes. The European Alliance can provide push for the processes, and monitor the tendencies and maintain some financial support. The plans of the alliance are mainly supported by the European Social Partners ( BusinessEurope, UEAPME, ETUC, CEEP), Eurochambers, companies and enterprises, and European Round Table of Industries. Cedefop will provide administrative, monitoring and analytical support, ETF will be responsible for contribution of the alliance principle in the partner countries.
The strategic vision of the Georgia Vocational Education foundation (transformation program of the vocational education, memorandums with the Chamber of Commerce and with other interested parties) and its practical activities (with enterprise unions and other parties) are completely identical to the strategic position and purposes of the European Alliance for apprenticeship. The experts at the foundation are actively involved in the development of programs and training packages for implementation of modern forms of the apprenticeship. Experts are deeply convinced in the actualization ( relevance ) and success of the planned alliance strategic course and fully support it!
The board chairman of the Foundation
A.Ejibadze
