Recap of Forum on Vocational Excellence 2024

From September 10 to 12, the third Forum on Vocational Excellence of the Community of Practice of the Centers of Vocational Excellence (CoP CoVEs) took place in in Lyon, France as a side-event of the WorldSkills 2024 competition. Over the course of three jam-packed days with plenary key notes, round tables, site visits, 16 workshops, 5 cooperation sessions and the 1200 m2 CoVE Villages, with demonstrations and exciting initiatives, nearly 700 participants exchanged best practices, learned from each others lessons learned and made smart connections between the CoVE community and the 120 Campus des métiers et des qualifications initiatives in France, the TKNIKA network in the Basque country in Spain, the Dutch VET public private partnerships of Wij zijn Katapult, and the recently announced Centers of Vocational Excellence in Australia, among others.

A few highlights:

• The opening session with discussions about the definition of excellence, the power of CoVEs and their international role in shaping the future of vocational education.
• Empowering key notes by Nicolas Schmit, European commissioner for jobs and social rights, and Geoffroy de Vitry, High Commissioner for vocational education and training in France, advocating how the excellence of CoVE and worldskills are linked. The strong conclusion by Nicole Belloubet, Minister of Education and Youth Affairs of France, provided a firm wrap-up.
• The enthusiastic response to the European Platform for Urban Greening’s innovation showcases such as the annual International Urban Greening Week, the Innovation Deep Dives and our interactive metro map with training offerings.
• Knowledge sharing during workshops on our spin-off projects such as Building an Applied Research Facility Into CoVE (BARCOVE), GREENVEU, and Breathegreen – TecRoc.
• The amazing network event to connect French and Dutch VET providers, organized by the Dutch embassy in France.
• The field trip to La Confluence, a neighborhood where urban greening is an essential part of urban renewal, led by practor Heidi Kamerling (Yuverta) and Lena Grunicke (Royal Ginkel Group).
• Walking around at the WorldSkills competition area and see successful Yuverta students Teun Bevers, Skip Willems and Gerrit van Aalst competing in Gardening/Landscaping, and Floristry. What a passion and craftsmanship!

Self-sustainable Community

In 2019 the CoP CoVEs started as a grass roots learning community with just 5 project leaders. The aim was to help each other implementing these exciting new Centers of Vocational Excellence, in which VET providers, companies and regional governments work together to deliver state of the art vocational education and training, share facilities, conduct applied research and provide a Life Long Learning training offer for their respective sectors. All to make sure that students, teachers and enterprises have the knowledge and skills to address the societal challenges we are facing.

Five years later there are 53 of these initiatives co-funded by the European Commission. Wanna learn more about the results and outcomes of the Forum? Keep an eye on www.copcoves.eu, where you will also find a network map describing all CoVEs.

Since the Community of Practice is self-sustained and not receiving any funding, their success is highly dependent on the efforts of all involved, sharing their knowledge and making time to contribute to this Community by and for the project leaders of the CoVEs.