News
CATEGORY: Socioeconomic development
LOCATION: North Macedonia
START/END: 2006
CONSULTANCY BUDGET: 298,700 €
CLIENT: European Agency for Reconstruction (EAR)
ORIGIN OF FUNDING: CARDS
PARTNERS: Berufsförderungsinstitut Wien
LDK’s BUDGET SHARE: 85%
STAFF PROVIDED: 17
Type of Services
The Consultants main aims were:
- to assist and advise the Ministry of Education and Science in the effective and efficient implementation of new curricula and the pedagogical / didactic use of newly installed, curriculum-driven, dedicated modern equipment in laboratories and workshops in 53 VET schools;
- to organize and carry out a specific training programme of short, targeted and tailor-made courses in schools to ensure the mastering and optimal use of new equipment and the upgrading of didactic sequencing of learning processes corresponding to the new curricula;
- to assist the Ministry of Education and Science to take forward results from VET Reform Phase III, in particular to support the start-up of the new national VET expertise infrastructure (National VET Centre), by developing the necessary institutional capacity to enable newly recruited staff to carry out their assignment in a broad field of activities in the VET and labour market area.
Description
This project was the fourth in a series of VET reform projects, which began in 1998 with an aim to enhance the reform for secondary education in North Macedonia and to modernize VET schools to meet the needs of the labor market.
During previous PHARE support and the most recent CARDS VET project, equipment was delivered to schools with an aim to facilitate and implement new curricula to improve and align the skills of students with those required by the labor force. However, an evaluation indicates that teachers in classrooms and workshops had difficulties coping with the new curricula as they were not acquainted with the state of the art technology and were unable to introduce the modern equipment into the teaching process. Furthermore, during Phase III of the VET reform the Ministry of Education and Science (MoES) set up a VET sector within the National Bureau for Development of Education (BDE) with the intention of transforming it into the National VET center as soon as the VET Law is enacted.
Thus, VET Phase IV activities split into two components:
- Complementary teacher training linked to the introduction of new curricula, in particular for teachers dealing with practical training of students on equipment provided by EU PHARE and CARDS support;
- Consolidation of VET reform by further capacity building for national VET Center (Modular Development Programme).
