Vocational Education and Training Toolbox

The Vocational Education and Training Toolbox (VET-Toolbox) project is a facility promoting inclusive demand driven VET and Skills Development, financed by the European Commission and co-financed by Germany and implemented by a consortium of four agencies: ENABEL, British Council, GIZ, LuxDev with AFD as a silent partner.

This facility will provide and deploy high level expertise, develop tools and instruments and other learning and support actions, based on support requests introduced by partner countries on themes such as VET policy and reform, labour market intelligence, private sector engagement in VET and inclusiveness. The VET Toolbox will also financially support local non state actor initiatives on inclusiveness, through a series of call for proposals.

In line with EU policy, notably the Agenda for Change, and the Sustainable Development Goal 4 ‘Ensure inclusive and quality education for all and promote lifelong learning’ and Goal 8 ‘Promote inclusive and sustainable economic growth, employment and decent work for all’, the overall objective of the VET Toolbox is to improve the effectiveness of VET reforms so that they are more demand-driven and responsive to labour market needs and provide increased access to (self-) employment, including for disadvantaged groups.

This is being pursued by the projects' specific objective: Providing partner countries with know-how, tools and advice in order to improve the labour market responsiveness of VET reforms, strategies and action plans, in particular the ones supported by the EU (EC and EU Member States), thereby also enabling the orientation towards the inclusion of disadvantaged groups and most vulnerable people.

As such the VET Toolbox is expected to be complementary to ongoing or planned investments in VET. The VET Toolbox shall deliver needs-based results, mainly in the form of tools and short to medium (intermittent) term advisory services, in the following components:

• result 1: Tools and advice for VET system- and labour market analysis are provided to assist local stakeholders to improve evidence-based VET programming, and serve as basis for informed strategic decisions in response to demographics, economic development and labour market needs;
• result 2: Tools and advice necessary to put in place sustainable mechanisms of consultation and active participation of the private sector in VET are developed and delivered;
• result 3: Local stakeholders are capacitated in promoting inclusive VET training for the formal and informal sector;
• result 4: Methodologies and approaches to support the integration of disadvantaged groups into VET learning and into the labour market are piloted.