Promoting vocational education as a way of reducing unemployment and tacking the crisis was one of the highlights of today's meeting of EU education ministers.
Mojca Škrinjar, State Secretary at the Ministry of Education, said that compared to other EU countries, the situation in Slovenia in this field was bad. "We are at the EU's tail for sure. Only 17% of demand for professional profiles is covered. This means that employers can look for some professions and simply not find them," the state secretary said.
In a bid to improve the situation, the ministry will organise in the first half of next month a meeting of all stakeholders - trade unions from both the private and public sectors, employers, experts, principals and teachers as well as experts from abroad to report on best practices.
"If we could succeed in finding a good model to bring more of quality vocational education into the education system this would be a win-win situation for all," Škrinjar said.
According to her, there are two main reasons for the current situation - one is that a lot of the industry went bust in the 1990s and the other that self-management brought a different kind of valuing of work, so that office jobs became much more appreciated than manual work.
Source: SloveniaTimes
