Recently Andrea Laczik, Director of Research and Kat Emms, Senior Researcher participated in the 5th International Vocational Education and Training (VET) Crossing Boundaries Conference in Kaunas, Lithuania. On the visit, they met with two colleagues from Lithuania’s Ministry of Education, Science and Sport - we met with Joana Vilimiene, Head of VET and Nomeda Barauskiené, Head of Communications in the historic building of the country’s ministry. This gave us the opportunity to delve deeper into the Lithuanian education system, particularly understanding how the VET system operates and what some of the challenges and policy initiatives are that are being implemented.
Lithuania is a Baltic country with a small population of almost 3 million (2.80m, 2021). It has a high proportion of its young people attending and achieving well at university. The country has the highest tertiary educational attainment in the EU at 57.8% versus an EU average 40.3% (Cedefop). Private higher education is relatively prominent across the small country, with around 12% of higher education students attending these private institutions. However, around half of all students at state and private colleges and universities pay for their studies. Despite there being a high employment rates of tertiary education graduates (87.6% versus 85% EU average), this does coexist with overqualification and significant mismatches between skills supply and skills demand (Cedefop).
With such high proportions taking the higher education route, low numbers of young people follow the VET route - around 25% of pupils are enrolled in upper secondary vocational programmes. Alongside this, most young people engage with school-based VET and only very low numbers are taking up initial apprenticeship opportunities (3%, 2021). There is no vocational HE provision in Lithuania as is the case in England with the introduction of Degree Apprenticeships. This means that in spite of a highly qualified population, there are pressures to prepare more people with the skills that are required and missing in the labour market. The Lithuanian government are working hard to increase the number of young people choosing the VET route in order to fill the shortages that exist for lower and middle -skilled workers. Yet one of the key problems they face is the low attractiveness and prestige of VET. An issue that we also recognise clearly in England as well as in many other countries across the globe.
The compulsory age of schooling in Lithuania is up to the age of 16, consequently pupils get insight into VET options before this. This has recently been strengthened with the government having introduced a career guidance framework from Grade 1 (age 6-7) all the way up to the end of compulsory schooling. The guidance states clearly what schools are required to do in each year in line with the career guidance that is appropriate for each age group. Part of the career guidance will include visiting VET schools (similar to colleges in England) and their sectorial training centres and companies across a range of sectors for example. The policy also ensures there is a career guidance specialist in every school. The country is aware of how big a role parents play in decision-making about further study routes, but likewise the role peers and teachers play. This is one of the reasons behind the introduction of national open days of VET schools, which gives the opportunity for all decision-makers – students, parents and teachers – to attend any of the VET schools they wish across the country. These open days can help showcase that the VET schools are modern institutions with high-quality facilities, and can help make them more appealing. According to our hosts, VET schools are very well equipped in Lithuania and most people are unaware of this.
As with the case in England, VET schools (colleges) and the gymnasium (similar to grammar schools or sixth forms) are competing for students.
Both types of institutions need a good intake of students to sustain themselves. An initiative introduced a few years ago has tried to promote and incentivise students to study at both VET schools and gymnasiums simultaneously. The sharing of students across the two types of institutions allows students to select a mix of academic subject delivered in gymnasiums and vocational subjects offered in VET schools in order to more closely fit with their interests and ambitions. Since the initiative was introduced, uptake has been good and steadily increasing. Feedback from learners so far has been positive and policy makers hope the scheme will grow further in the coming years.
A further policy objective is to improve the content and design of the VET curriculum. The VET qualifications, competences and learning outcomes are defined by Sectoral trade committees and programmes developed centrally by the government and offered in every VET school. This ensures a consistent quality across the board and also ensures all courses cover all the necessary general competences and transferable skills that are required of a person entering the workplace. Our hosts suggest that green skills are not so well covered yet within these curricula. However over the next few years they are going through a process of revising and updating or creating at least 95 of the VET programmes, and the appropriate green skills will be integrated. To support the teaching of the updated curriculum, VET teachers will also be trained, including training them to teach green skills. Our colleagues at the Ministry explained that the integration of green skills into VET is more difficult compared to the integration of digital skills into the curriculum, which has mostly already been well developed. With digital skills there was an immediate push from employers and so the schools and colleges had to integrate these to keep up with what was already happening in industry. For sustainability and green skills, it's the opposite. The push is coming from the government, it’s not necessarily the skills that are being consistently used in the workplace yet. Therefore it’s going be a much slower process integrating these into the education and training system.
Another way Lithuania ensures the VET curriculum is relevant for learners is through working closely with industry. In every VET school in Lithuania employers are part of the management structure and are directly involved across many areas of the system, for example in admissions and the assessment of competencies, which has been very successful so far.
They also extend their partnership work to their Baltic neighbours given their similar history and context. The Ministry colleagues explained that they have a close connexion with Latvia and Estonia to learn from each other’s practices and challenges. In fact, they already have planned an upcoming visit to a school in Latvia that has aligned much of their delivery with green and digital skills. They were hoping to learn how Latvia had approached this.
Lithuania, like many countries across the world, faces issues of poor prestige when it comes to VET pathways, and have been working hard to try to increase enrolments in VET. Ultimately, they hope that VET will be seen more as a ‘first choice’ for many rather than merely being an option for those who don’t succeed academically. Their recent initiatives attempt to highlight that VET is a useful route to get into successful jobs and is a place for high quality curriculum and facilities. We hope that this is the beginning of a relationship with our colleagues in Lithuania and that through continued communication we can learn from each other’s policy and practice.