The European Commission (EC) makes the case for Centres of Vocational Excellence (CoVE) and launches the second pilot call for CoVE proposals.
In order to foster excellence and relevance of Vocational Education and Training (VET) in Europe, the European Commission has put into place in 2018 a new scheme implemented under Erasmus+: the Centres of Vocational Excellence (CoVE). The CoVEs shall help VET becoming more flexible and responsive to fast changing skills need and contributing to social challenges at European level, such as migration and transition towards a greener economy. The full CoVE instrument shall be implemented under the next Erasmus+ programme as of 2021.
The pilot round 2020 has been launched now: The Call for Papers is published. The action is implemented as Erasmus+ Key Action 3. The European Commission announced the five funded projects from a first pilot – or rather pre-pilot implemented as Key Action 2 – in July 2019 (see SwissCore article). Under the current second pilot call, projects are expected to be larger and more complex than in the first round. For this, projects can apply for a grant of up to EUR 4 million (2019 pilot: up to EUR 1 million/project) and the project duration is of 4 years (2019 pilot: 2 years). The deadline is 20 February 2020.
In the current pilot, the projects shall include at least eight full partners from a minimum of four Erasmus+ countries, whereas each country must involve at least one industry partner and one VET provider. Organisations from Erasmus+ Programme and/or Partner countries – hence also from Switzerland – can be associated partners (i.e. do not receive funding), to the extent it is demonstrated that their participation brings an added value to the CoVE. However, the activities must take place in Erasmus+ Programme countries.
The EC was also mapping existing CoVE-type structures during late 2018 and early 2019. The aim was to gain a better idea on how EU funding instruments, above all Erasmus+ post-2020, could support the development of CoVEs. The resulting mapping report was published this month. The report includes the Baden region in Switzerland as a good example for “supporting innovation and business start-ups”. The report suggests, amongst others, that there are indeed areas where EU level policy, funding and coordination can have a European added value to what is already done: European funding could support CoVEs in promoting VET excellence across Europe. In addition, EU-funded CoVEs could address European challenges such as migration and early school leaving as well as foster excellent internationalisation of VET, e.g. by developing advice and guidance on internationalisation strategies, and trans-national joint curricula and international campuses for VET. Another report published in October looks at the role of VET in Smart Specialisation Strategies, highlighting that VET could often play a more dynamic and important role in innovation ecosystems.
The ending of the current Erasmus+ programme in 2020 will coincide with the ending of the Riga conclusions period in the context of the Copenhagen process. With the Riga conclusions, ministers from the European Union Member States, candidate countries, Iceland, Norway and Liechtenstein endorsed in 2015 medium-term deliverables for vocational education and training for the 2015-2020. The five defined priority areas include (1) the promotion of work-based learning, (2) the further development of quality assurance mechanisms, (3) the enhancement of access to VET, (4) the strengthening of key competences, and (5) the introduction of systematic approaches to professional development of VET teachers. 2020 will thus be an important period to shape VET policy priorities post-2020 and to fine-tune EU funding instruments to best support the implementation of those policy priorities.