Across the globe, vocational education and training is characterised by a number of over-arching trends, including the increasing use of technology, the growing importance of information and communications systems, and changes to national demographics. At the interface between the education and training system and the world of work, VET faces the challenge of tackling these changes, of making a constructive contribution to solving the problems posed by the transition from education to employment, and of ensuring that the next generation has the skills it – and the economy – needs. This volume comprises thirty individual contributions that together add up to a comprehensive overview of the current situation in vocational education and training, its strengths and weaknesses, and its prospects. VET experts from Canada, the USA, India, China, Japan and Korea, as well as from a number of European countries, focus on their national context and how it fits in to the bigger picture. The contributions combine theoretical discussions from various strands of VET research with evidence from country case studies and examples from current practice.

Public debate on the future of work and of education and training has been raging across Europe. Globalisation, digitisation, migration, demographics and the greening economy are the challenges fuelling discussions. Unemployment, underemployment, mismatches between people's skills and available jobs, and flat or falling incomes have been undermining the cohesion and the social model of European societies. It is against this backdrop that EU Member States have been working ever more closely together in vocational education and training (VET). In June 2016, the European Commission published a New skills agenda for Europe, which spelled out a list of immediate actions, with a view to enabling Europe to improve the quality and relevance of skills formation, to make skills and qualifications more visible and comparable, and to advance skills intelligence, documentation and informed career choices. As the current framework for cooperation in VET approaches its 2020 horizon, Cedefop is now looking further ahead to stimulate the debate on European VET cooperation until 2030. The first step has been to take stock of the current features of European VET systems, to identify similarities and differences.

Recoge: 1. What is European about vocational education and training in Europe?

This study examines changes in the way that knowledge, skills and competence are differentiated in curricula, and how learning is organised across different learning sites: in classrooms, workshops or laboratories, and at workplaces. The study collected information through Cedefop's ReferNet network, in-depth country case studies, and an online survey among almost 1 000 European VET providers. Results show that several countries have strengthened the general education component of their VET programmes either by increasing the extent of teaching general subjects or by better integrating them into the vocational curriculum. At the same time, the increased emphasis on general skills has not taken place at the expense of workplace learning; on the contrary, an expansion of workplace learning in IVET curricula has been ubiquitous. However, it is becoming increasingly difficult to assess the exact extent of workplace learning, due to increased flexibility allowed at provider and individual level in the combination of different learning environments.

To help in shaping future policies, a Cedefop project considers different routes and multiple options for VET. An analysis of VET developments since 1995 has helped to outline a series of potential paths - scenarios - pointing towards plausible and consistent pictures of how VET can evolve by 2035, depending on today's decisions and policy choices. Using these scenarios, Cedefop intends to inform strategic discussions on future European cooperation on VET.