Vocational education and training - VET

Background
As Ukraine struggles with the education of healthcare professionals due to the war, we aimed to identify the specific effects of the war on medical education, the resulting needs, and the expected consequences for schools, faculty, staff, students, and the healthcare system.

Methods
In October and November 2022, we performed a survey of students, faculty, and staff of medical schools in Ukraine and conducted semi-structured interviews with faculty leaders (i.e., rectors, vice-rectors). We conducted a descriptive analysis of the survey’s closed-ended questions. The survey and the interviews included open-ended questions about war-related restrictions to teaching and learning, resulting needs, and expected consequences, for which we applied a thematic analysis.

Results
We received 239 survey responses (N = 49 faculty and staff, N = 190 students) and conducted nine interviews with faculty leaders across Ukraine. Most survey participants indicated that they had experienced restrictions or changes to their work or study due to the war (86% of faculty and staff, 69% of students). From the thematic analysis of the survey and interviews, we identified eight themes: disruption of teaching, increased workload, mental stress, financial restrictions, non-war related needs, international cooperation, quality of education, and prospects of future professionals. The quality of healthcare education in Ukraine was threatened, and schools, faculty, staff, and students were under great strain. While already established international cooperation has been supportive, some needs have still not been addressed.

Conclusions
We hope that our findings will help researchers and educators from abroad contribute to meeting Ukraine’s needs in medical education.

Several initiatives have been launched in Italy to ensure and safeguard the effective integration of Ukrainian refugees in society, VET and the labour market. Economic aid and housing solutions, access to training courses and economic incentives to facilitate  training, skills profiling and targeted skills assessment, measures to ease their access to the labour market, working rights and rights for specific occupations, are some of the initiatives and measures alongside with the activation of all stakeholders (at regional, national and local levels).

The large-scale aggression by Russia against Ukraine has devastated the country. Rebuilding will not just take enormous financial resources, but most importantly human ingenuity and skills. One of the most promising ways to build those skills is to offer those young people who had to leave Ukraine because of the war high-quality vocational education and training (VET) in their host countries.

Integrating refugees into vocational education is never easy, because learners have to adjust to new educational programmes, different equipment and ways of working, and foreign languages. But OECD’s analyses show that there are many promising ways of doing this effectively.

Join us for a webinar where we will discuss how host countries can best support Ukrainian refugees through their VET systems, while also benefitting their domestic labour markets. We will also look at the larger role that VET can play in developing a workforce ready to rebuild Ukraine after the war.

The webinar will begin with an introduction from the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine to provide an overview of the situation for VET students, as well as a few words from OECD Secretary-General Mathias Cormann. We will then present new analysis from recent OECD papers on the topic of VET in the context of the crisis in Ukraine, and finish with a discussion between a panel of experts

The objective of this paper is to substantiate the system of vocational education and training (VET) of fashion designers and technologists to perform computer modeling and design of the clothes.

In post-Soviet countries, well-functioning institutions are needed to foster productive entrepreneurial development and growth

Elevator pitch
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the differing impact of institutions on entrepreneurship development is undeniable. Several post-Soviet countries benefitted from early international integration by joining the EU, adopting the euro, and becoming OECD members. This process enabled entrepreneurship to develop within institutional contexts where democratic and free market principles were strengthened. In general, however, post-Soviet economies continue to be characterized by higher levels of corruption, complex business regulations, weak rule of law, uncertain property rights and often, lack of political will for institutional change.