Decentralising vocational education and setting up centres of vocational excellence and innovation: The case of Ukraine

This report is another milestone of the European Training Foundation’s (ETF) project ‘Decentralising vocational education and training (VET) in Ukraine: Momentum for action’, launched in 2016 in cooperation with the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine.

This project identified several priority areas for steering systemic reforms in the country’s VET policies:

■ good multilevel governance (institutional, communication and financial aspects);

■ optimisation and rationalisation of VET school networks;

■ VET school autonomy and accountability;

■ public–private partnerships (PPPs) for VET and skills development.

The exploration of a possible role and function for the regional VET councils in Ukraine was a further step towards tackling these issues from the logic of decentralisation of VET policies (ETF/Galvin Arribas et al., 2018). Following this exercise, the ETF and the MoES agreed to focus on improving the effectiveness of regional VET networks, working together to set up centres of vocational excellence and innovation (CoVEs) in Ukraine.