What does the greening of vocational education and training (VET) mean and what does it take? Cedefop’s 7th virtual get together, in the context of the European Year of Skills, attempted to give answers to this question on 25 January.
A variety of speakers and around 300 participants discussed the challenges and opportunities presented to VET by the green transition and ways to address them.
In his opening remarks, Cedefop Executive Director Jürgen Siebel talked about the Agency’s work on the topic for the past 15 years, stressing that ‘We strongly believe in people as green transition drivers, and champion their skills, opportunities and the means they need to become part of it; and vocational education and training, not only for young people but also for adults, plays a key role here.’
Cedefop expert Stelina Chatzichristou gave an overview of the Agency’s work on greening VET and skills, including the use of skills intelligence to build up the Cedefop green observatory. She presented the implications that skills and jobs for the green transformation have on VET, highlighting that ‘it is evident that the green transition creates many more jobs than it destroys, but its benefits are not equally distributed across sectors.’
Participants were asked for their opinion in quick online polls. On how much attention and progress there is on greening VET, 9 in 10 responded ‘some or a lot of attention’ and ‘little or some progress’. According to two thirds of participants, medium-skilled occupations (e.g. solar panel technicians) are the most important for the green transition and key occupations in the green transition usually work in green technologies.
In the roundtable discussion that followed, moderated by Cedefop’s Jasper van Loo (Department coordinator) and Anastasia Pouliou (expert), experts from Austria, Finland, France and Ireland shared insights on how to benefit from the enormous potential of VET in the green transition.
Summarising the exchanges, the moderators noted that:
- The green transition ultimately is a skills transition and VET has an enormous part to play.
- Regions, sectors and cities must take charge of making greening happen.
- The green transition is hard work, and it helps to be aware of how powerful VET is as a trailblazer of greening.
- Cedefop will continue to be a green transition ally by expanding its green skills intelligence and offering insights into how VET and skills policy implementation can support countries, regions and sectors.
You can watch a recording of the event here.