Central and Eastern Europe: Vocational Education and Training in Transition.

Analysis of recent developments in vocational education and training in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe brings out certain common problems. On the economic level, Hungary, Poland, Estonia, and Lithuania are undergoing a profound crisis. Consequences for training have included the closing of many company schools or workshops, absence of recruitment, and many teachers attempting to enter the private sector. Three approaches to reforming the vocational education and training system are possible: a typical Anglo-Saxon approach aimed at establishing secondary general education with broad-based vocational preparation, a more continental European approach advocating modernized forms of basic vocational education, and one claiming that the architecture of the educational system should be kept as open as possible during the transition period. The difficulty encountered by certain ministries in assuming the weighty new responsibilities passed on to them in the context of change may have contributed to the widely observable decentralization process. Identifying needs of the market economy in the case of countries where the economy itself is so uncertain is a problem that must be resolved. Although greater flexibility and responsiveness are indisputably desirable in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, both the internal coherence of the training systems and its connection with the labor market and the society at large must be maintained. A separate mechanism to guarantee regulation is needed. (YLB)