Towards regionally-based occupational standards – TO REGOS project

About the project

15th March 2019 officially marked the beginning of the ERI SEE and Western Balkans Alliance for Work-based Learning project Towards regionally-based standards of occupation, funded by the Austrian Development Agency with the funds secured by the Austrian Development Cooperation. TO REGOS  project plans to contribute to the employability and labour-market mobility of young people in the SEE region by investing in quality and labour-market relevant vocational education and training (VET). More concretely, the project is focusing on a strong partnership between business and education, thus ensuring definition and elaboration of labour-market relevant skills in the standards of occupations, which make the core of the qualifications standards and consequently curricula, taught at schools in the region.

The TO REGOS project primarily aims at increasing cooperation between business and education sector in VET at regional and national level, developing Common Regional Framework – methodology – for the development of regionally-based occupational standards, developing, adopting and translating 5 regionally-based standards of occupations into national standards of qualifications within two sectors: tourism and hospitality and construction industry, and developing a feasibility study on developing regionally-based standards of qualifications and action plan. Primary project target groups are: (1) VET  agencies/centres from the region (2) Chambers of Commerce from the region (3) private sector organisations and companies from identified priority sectors (4) other relevant stakeholders (Ministries of Education, Labour, National Qualification Agencies etc.)

More detailed project description can be found here.

Project activities

The project started with a regional meeting in May 2019 that aimed at fine-tuning the methodology for developing regionally based occupational standards (OSs) led by international expert with the participation of the TO REGOS project partners. The large-scale Kick-off conference was the second milestone that officially presented the project goals and activities to a wide range of stakeholders form the region.

As the first step in the development of the regionally-based occupational standards, the TO REGOS project partners started working on the development of the hotel and restaurant technician OS. The activities started in all partner economies with the organisation of expert working groups that will, following national procedures as well as agreed framework for the development of the regionally based OSs, develop a proposal that will be elaborated and discussed within two regional meetings by the end of 2019.  National activities and meetings are being published here.

In order to ensure that the development of regionally-based OSs are respecting in line with the requirements of environmental sustainability, social sustainability and gender equality the project is to subcontract one or more experts in theses fields to review the outputs. The Call for experts is available on the WBA4WBL platform.

It is expected that the regionally-based hotel and restaurant technician OS will be developed by March 2020 while the next calendar year will also mark the beginning of activities related to the development of the OSs within the construction industry sector.

For more information follow the WBA4WBL platform or contact the TO REGOS project team members.