Transition towards Work-Based Learning (WBL) in education serves the needs of citizens, enterprises and the entire society therefore it is an attractive answer to many of the burning territorial challenges Danube countries are coping with. Within Vocational Education and Training (VET) WBL enjoys a special importance, since in Europe, about half of jobs requires a medium level qualification, primarily acquired through VET.

As company- and practice-oriented forms of WBL in VET (e.g. apprenticeship and dual VET) have a strongly positive impact on local economies and societies (e.g. easing transition from education to work, boosting youth employment, reducing labour market disparity), most Danube countries have already introduced preparatory measures with partial results. Although reinforcement of WBL is at the core of Europe’s response to the crisis, and thus highlighted by the Europe 2020 Strategy as well, Cedefop and EAfA (European Alliance for Apprenticeship) data clearly show that institutional weaknesses, lack of cooperation of VET actors, missing capacities and cultural bottlenecks seriously jeopardise the transition of existing VET systems towards more demand-driven vocational education in the Danube Region.

The project thus aims to improve the capacities of all relevant VET actors through reinforcing regional, national and transnational partnerships in order to ease the transition of existing VET systems in the Danube countries.

Project is co-funded by European Union funds (ERDF, IPA).

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