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EU Vocational Excellence Forum 2022: discovering the Centre of Vocational Excellence

21/11/2022

On 15 and 16 November 2022, EARLALL participated with more than 260 participants in the EU Vocational Excellence Forum 2022. The Forum was jointly organised by the European Commission and the Basque government – EARLALL member – with the support of the European Training Foundation (ETF), Cedefop and EACEA, as well as the Community of Practice on CoVEs, Katapult and Tknika.

The first edition of the EU Vocational Excellence Forum 2022 – Global Partnership for Vocational Skills was the opportunity to discuss the latest developments in the European initiative on Centres of Vocational Excellence (CoVEs). EARLALL is part of one of the most innovative CoVEs initiatives: LCAMP: Learner-Centric Advanced Manufacturing Platform for Centre of Vocational Excellence (CovEs), which aims to become an international collaborative learning factory in the advanced manufacturing sector. 

The Forum was opened by representatives of the Basque Government, the Spanish Ministry of Education, and the European Commissioner for Jobs and Social Rights. All the representatives stressed their commitment to CoVEs initiatives and to advancing the importance of Vocational Education and Trainingning at the regional, national and European level. 

Centre of Vocational Excellence 

After an inspiring discussion about the ‘skills for the future’, the Forum moved from ‘policy to practice’ giving the floor to the different representatives from the Centres of Vocational Excellence. Unai Ziarsolo, International Project Manager at Tknika, Basque VET Applied Research Centre, was invited to speak about LCAMP. Ziarsolo highlighted how the results of LCAMP would be shared with larger VET ecosystems, ensuring that the project becomes a European reference platform. The international and collaborative dimension of LCAMP earned its top spot as the audience’s ‘best secret’ from the range of CoVEs initiatives presented during the panel. 

Noelia Cantero, Director of EARLALL, added after  Ziarsolo’s presentation that ‘we are doing this for the individual, the learners and the educators. This is about more than just where we put money.’ 

The LCAMP project was represented by project partners Firat Arslan y Hasan Burçin Menteş de KPDoNE (Kocaeli Directorate of National Education), Noelia Cantero (EARLALL); Hervé Danton (Mecanic Valleé); Jasmina Poličnik (Knowledge Innovation Centre); Jan Bundschuh (DHBW); Liher Errasti  (Miguel Altuna); Susana Espilla, Iñigo Araiztegui y Unai Ziarsolo (Tknika) and Josu Riezu (AFM). 

Visits to Basque VET centres and Tknika 

The second day of the Forum was dedicated to visiting Basque Country centres and TKNIKA. In these visits, participants learnt more about the last developments in the local Vocational Education and Training model, such as what they are doing in technological labs (robotics, advanced or Virtual Reality), in the bioscience field or in advanced metal manufacturing. 

The next edition of the Forum will take place in the Netherlands in the coming year, coinciding with the European Year of Skills.