Employers: length of new vocational curricula must be tested
The Confederation of Employers proposed to the Minister of Education not to oblige schools to plan vocational education curricula as a four-year curriculum, but to leave the choice between 3 and 4-year curricula. The new four-year plans should be implemented in parallel in the coming years until the impact of the pilot curricula can be assessed.
“Firstly, we commend you as a minister for your willingness to reform the education sector. We can see that you have made efforts, for example, to better align curricula with the needs of the labour market and to consolidate the school network, for which we as employers have been standing up for years,” explained Raul Aron, advisor-analyst to the Confederation of Employers, in his response to the approval of the draft regulation of the Minister of Education and Research on the National Curriculum for Vocational Secondary Education. “However, in the case of the current draft, we also see risks, which we would like to propose to avoid.”
The main aim of the draft is to lay the foundations for a four-year standard for vocational education and training. According to the explanatory memorandum, the aim is to increase the choice of primary school pupils so that young people are not excluded from the education system before they have obtained a vocational or higher education diploma.
According to the Confederation of Employers, the content of the draft is contrary to the aim of the draft. Today, VET curricula are either three or four years long. It is important for VET students to complete secondary education in addition to vocational education and vice versa. Paragraph 6 of the explanatory memorandum to the draft says that only four years of vocational education and training will be possible in future. This means that there will be fewer options and that the four-year VET provided for in the draft may not prove to be a sufficiently attractive alternative to three-year upper secondary education.
New schemes need a trial period
The Confederation’s view is that the new four-year VET curricula should be implemented in parallel over four to five years until the impact of the pilot curricula can be assessed. This will minimise the risks of a lack of resources or of the new curricula not being sufficiently attractive for key target groups – for example, young people whose educational path is currently limited to primary school. Both the potential loss of attractiveness and the shortage of teaching staff are also mentioned in the explanatory memorandum to the draft.
Therefore, the Confederation of Employers proposes not to oblige schools to plan the curricula of vocational education as a four-year curriculum, but to leave the choice between 3 and 4-year curricula, if necessary in coordination with professional councils. For further study in three-year programmes, we recommend, where appropriate, the creation of half-year/module study opportunities in cooperation with general education schools or higher education institutions.
Read the full text of the Employers’ Confederation’s response here (downloadable Word file).