Vocational and higher education in the context of EU enlargement

Malta in the EU implies that vocational and higher education must, where appropriate, synergise their resources. Similarly, quality assurance at all levels and in both institutions must be constantly monitored. The Bologna Process and the Copenhagen Declaration have laid the foundations of a European education without vertical and horizontal frontiers. It is the Europe of the people that matters and education is obliged to empower citizens with the skills to be competitive and entrepreneurial.

As a member of the European Union, Malta made an enormous leap forward into the challenges and opportunities that interdependence offers. Jacques Delors once remarked that the European Union was like a bicycle ride; in the same way that one has to keep cycling not to fall off the bicycle, the EU has to keep on setting targets not to lose momentum or be derailed. Similarly, member states must keep the Vocational and Higher Education (VHE) agenda open on issues related to comparability, transferability, transparency and quality assurance so that systems of education across the old continent continue to obtain higher degrees of ownership and autonomy.

In many respects, the EU has brought an end to monopoly. At various levels of development, the post-colonial period in Malta has been a search for a model of interdependence which best marries autonomy with ownership. In education, the search has been on for a framework which best suits our economic growth, the employability of our workforce and the quality of life of all our citizens. To my mind, the education sector is one that will mostly benefit from membership.

The Bologna Process which started in 1999/2000 and which was followed up in Salamanca (2001), Prague (2001) and Berlin (2003) and will continue in Bergen (2005) established the concept of a European Higher Education Area. Parallel to this development is the Bruges-Copenhagen (2002) process which enhanced European co-operation in vocational education and training.

Among the various goals that these processes promote are autonomy and ownership of vocational and higher education and, the transformation of the diverse systems of European VHE into comparable, readable, transparent and transferable qualifications. Linked to these targets is the objective of setting up common European Quality Assurance mechanisms at both vocational and higher education institutions.

The European Credit Transfer System (ECTS) and the proposed European Common Quality Assurance Framework (EUVET) are tools that can help achieve this objective without infringing the autonomous character of VHEIs but underlying the need for ownership of systems of VHEIs that are recognised from Lisbon to Jyvaskala and from Tromso to Malta.

While retaining the credibility of one of Malta's oldest educational institutions, the University of Malta (1592) as well as the Education Division applied reforms that brought necessary changes in our system of education.

The absence of a vocational college was felt as early as the Nineties and long discussions have now brought back, to young generations, a college they deserve and, to the nation, a college that it needs. The challenge today is to sustain quality education in both vocational and higher education institutions and to bring the two sectors of education and training in a constantly working and mutually collaborative relationship for the benefit of Malta's economic growth.

Dilemmas and developments

The Education Act of 1988 re-founded the University of Malta and re-established the Faculties of Arts and Sciences while at the same time restructuring a worker-student scheme that had given students extensive work experience. In Vocational Education and Training (VET), technical institutes and trade schools continued to provide training and education, yet, due to changes in the labour market and fast technological developments, they gradually lost the aura they carried in the Seventies and the early Eighties as well as recognition and quality in the eyes of Government, employers, social partners, unions, parents and students.

In August 2000, Government founded MCAST by public deed and 13 months later opened its doors to over 2,000 students. The UK BTEC/EDEXCEL courses introduced across MCAST have so far served as an initial step to set benchmarks which previously were under attack. Parallel to these developments was the setting up, in the same year, by Legal Notice No. 215 of the Malta Professional and Vocational Awards Council.

LN 215/2000 also established five competence levels, Level 1 being that which allows the holder to 'perform relatively simple work requiring skills that are fairly quickly acquired' and Level 5 being that which allows the recipient of the certificate or diploma to "perform an autonomously pursued vocational activity as an employer or as a self-employed person, entailing a mastery of the scientific bases of the occupation." (see diagram)

Like the University of Malta and other VHEIs, today, MCAST is a crucial institution in the framework of Malta's education system and it is expected that developments in this institution will continue to be carefully looked into to ensure compliance with the emerging European Common Quality Assurance Framework initiative by ETF and CEDEFOP. The ultimate goal of the Framework is transparency and sustainability of quality assurance policies for VET in the European Union.

The search for sustainability

There are a number of positive and common strengths among vocational and higher education institutions in Malta:

The first is the decision to bring all entities under one political portfolio that of Education, Youth and Employment thus creating a platform for a more synchronised policy design and implementation.

The second is that VET has now been transformed into a more professional field of education and training. The enormous work undertaken by MCAST, IHC, ITS, MRC and ETC has placed VET on more solid foundations and it is expected that quality and growth will increase confidence among the various stakeholders.

The third is that access to VET courses has increased dramatically and on the whole such courses are governed by high quality and readable standards. This holds for public and private initiatives.

School leavers, the unemployed and those seeking new challenges and careers on their places of work have found in these institutions a source of practical hands-on learning which increases their chances of employability and lifelong education.

VET is once again almost at par with higher education and this augurs well for the need of a more prepared workforce in an enlarged and competitive Europe.

VET has found in Malta's training providers an institutional base for international programmes and projects particularly within the LdV, Socrates, Youth and other EU programmes.

The increase in the number of VHE providers as well as active participation in international meetings and EU programmes have opened up a number of challenges and opportunities for vocational and higher education.

Some of the opportunities are: to be part of European VET and the European Higher Education Area and to actively participate and influence their course of action; to make rational use of EU funding particularly through the European Social Fund and European Structural Funds and other similar EU funding programmes; to be actively part of a decision-making process that can forge a VET and HE systems that promote exchanges of information and resources, mobility, access to training, comparability and transparency in the awarding of certification, quality assurance mechanisms, lifelong learning and employability on a much wider scale.

On the other hand, the challenges are: to reinforce the Malta Professional and Vocational Awards Council and create within it two Awarding Boards one for Professional and one for Vocational Certification; to ensure that the proposed Commission for Higher Education takes into account the whole spectrum of education beyond compulsory age to draw vocational and academic education closer to each other; to standardise Malta's VET system on the lines of the proposed European Common Quality Assurance Framework; to invest in infrastructural support for VET on professional lines on a short/medium and long term basis; to rationalise on VET resources, research and training provision and to warrant a pro-active leadership in the VET project.

Vocational and higher education must render an economic and social service to a population of almost 400,000 [2003 estimates] a country seeking to be a "David among Goliaths" (a phrase borrowed from Malta News Editorial to mark the opening of MCAST in July 1966).

With an employment rate of 7%, GDP growth of 1.2% and GDP per capita of €13,730 on a surface area of 316 square kilometres, the challenges in education and training are those related to quality assurance and rationalisation of resources at all levels of vocational and higher education.

Added value

Educating the workforce to include highly qualified professionals would inevitably attract higher value added products and services to the island. Malta's determination to focus on high value activities necessitates that vocational and higher education should be measured against a system of quality assurance and high value.

The implications for vocational and higher education are significantly high. The World Bank's direction to assist countries in moving towards a knowledge society compels education and training providers to join forces, particularly in the context of a small island where human resources are limited and valid ones stretched to their full capacity. www.countryprofiler. com/malta

In view of a critical future, vocational and higher education in Malta must enter into a tripartite partnership between the Ministry of Education, Youth and Employment, the University of Malta and a consortium of locally-based VET providers. Furthermore, VHEIs must continue to attract industry, in tangible ways, towards their vocational and academic strategic boardrooms to create meaningful synergy between the world of learning and the world of work.

The old culture based on segregation between professionalism and vocationalism could be Malta's economic death sentence. Likewise, it is foolish to think that Malta's economy rests solely upon senior and higher management without the quality of a workforce at middle management and support levels.

This argument ties with the need for qualified leadership in vocational and higher education institutions. This leadership must be pro-active and not simply reactive; inspired and not simply functional; visionary and not simply structural; practical and not simply theoretical; dialogical and not simply manipulative. An institution without leadership is an institution endangered. Similarly, leadership without a constant search for resources is meaningless.

Synchronisation

The Bologna Process (2000), followed in the same year by the Lisbon Targets (in which the European Summit subscribed to the very ambitious goal of raising the employment rate by almost 10 percentage points in less than 10 years) the Barcelona Summit (2002) and the Copenhagen Declaration on co-operation in VET (2002) and subsequently by various other undertakings of Technical Working Groups and European meetings, seminars, research works illustrate that leadership today is an ever growing pre-requisite for success.

Inevitably the trend in European education is to create synergy between the various systems of vocational and higher education so that mobility and employability become relevant, applicable and practical measures for an enhanced quality of life. The ESS (European Employment Strategy) objective of employment for 'cohesion and inclusive markets' implies that vocational and higher education must work hand-in-hand to provide different but symbiotic and complementary learning experiences.

A way ahead

A revised Education Act, the setting up of a Commission for Higher Education, the rendering of the Malta Professional and Vocational Awards Council, the design of a formal partnership agreement between the University of Malta and the Malta College of Arts, Science and Technology and the setting-up of accreditation systems for VET on the lines of the EUVET are, in my view, the next imminent evolutionary processes needed in vocational and higher education in Malta to meet the challenges of enlargement.

Educators, in many parts of the world, are calling for a redesign of education, to align its standards with the challenges of educating students to become flexible in their approach towards learning so that they can adapt to new work environments and/or upgrade job-related skills as career needs and as careers themselves change.

Malta no exception

In my view, the challenges of a critical future for vocational and higher education in Malta are: the focus on lifelong learning needed to build a nation of learners; the creation of content that is challenging, motivating and relevant; a learning process that is interactive and individualised; more opportunities and access to education in adequate infrastructural environments; adapting education and training objectives to specific outcomes and certifiable job-related skills, and faith and confidence in local human resources.

In this respect, the rationalisation of human and financial resources in Maltese vocational and higher education will ultimately consolidate our quest for quality education and prevent the prospects of a precarious future which Malta cannot afford nor choose to ignore.

Dr James Calleja is Malta's representative on the EU Socrates sub-committee for higher education. The article is an extract taken from a paper entitled "Vocational Education in the Context of Higher Education in Malta and the EU" presented by the author during the 14th EURASHE annual conference held in Cyprus earlier this year.