Four years of the European Alliance for Apprenticeships

Between 30 and 31 May MCAST organised a high-level conference in cooperation with the European Commission and the Maltese Presidency. The event, which was held at the Malta College of Arts, Science and Technology at Paola, focussed on the European Alliance for Apprenticeships.

In his welcome speech during the event, the Minister for Education and Employment, Evarist Bartolo, stressed upon the need to strengthen the main objective of the European Alliance for Apprenticeship in bringing together governments with other key stakeholders to strengthen the quality, supply and image of apprenticeships in Europe.

Minister Barolo spoke about the relevance of apprenticeship in today’s job market as an effective solution to several critical problems. Minister Bartolo said that the focus on raising the quality of apprenticeships should be on striking a balance between theoretical and on-the-job training and hence enable the apprentice to remain employable in the long run on the basis of transferable and regularly updated expertise.

Minister Bartolo spoke about the importance of involving all stakeholders and social partners to achieve broad participation to improve and make apprenticeship training credible, transparent and responsive to new developments. Closer cooperation between the worlds of education and work and ensuring that the skills we teach and acquire reflect the needs of the modern labour market were also other points put forward by the Minister.

Minister Bartolo reiterated that the private sector plays a key role in apprenticeship schemes. Apprenticeships can only take place if companies, including small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), are willing to take responsibility for the in-company training. Companies can benefit enormously from this cooperation and from engaging in apprenticeship, in particular from better access to talents, skills and innovative ideas.

The Minister for Education and Employment also spoke about the importance of giving support to anyone offering information, advice and guidance to young people on everything they need to know about apprenticeships.

In his speech, Minister Bartolo outlined the role taken by his ministry in enabling all those that provide education and training to form collaborative partnerships in order to strengthen the links between the worlds of education and employment and further improve the skill base of the workforce. Malta has been working to develop policies eventually leading individuals to more meaningful employment through educational programmes that seek to implement novel ideas on how to prepare young people for the labour market. In this regard, giving young people the opportunity to acquire their skills directly in their prospective field of employment, while still furthering their education.

He particularly mentioned two important Ministry’s initiatives – My Journey and the Framework for the Education Strategy for Malta.

In his concluding remarks, Minister Bartolo spoke about the European Alliance as an excellent opportunity to involve a wide range of stakeholders, especially business partners, so as to expand apprenticeships nationally and further afield, to form new strate- gic partnerships and to learn from each other.

This conference will give particular attention to new members of the Alliance and to the apprentices themselves. The conference targets all existing and new members of the Alliance, such as companies, social partners, VET providers, chambers, NGOs and youth organisations, as well as policy-makers from national, regional and European level. The aim is to celebrate the first four first years of the European Alliance for Apprenticeships, by highlighting some of its achievements and successes, while also looking at current challenges and the way forward.

The conference was also addressed by Dr Silvio De Bono, president of the Board of Governors at MCAST, Detlef Eckert, director of Skills, DG Employment and Professor James Calleja, Cedefop director. Other stakeholders and social partners were among the guest speakers.

The European Alliance for Apprenticeship conference followed the meeting of directors general for Vocational Education and Training which was held on 29 and 30 May at the Corinthia Hotel and Spa. The meeting with the theme Access to VET, brought together directors general of vocational education and training and other senior members from the EU member states, candidate countries, EEA zone countries, representatives of the European Commission, the European Commission agencies (CEDEFOP and ETF), as well as the European social partners.