Local training partnerships have become a policy priority in the European Union. This trend reflects a trans-European belief that training is a critical determinant of international competitiveness. Partnerships represent one promising solution to a conflict that has dogged European vocational training efforts for many years. Policymakers recognize that small, local companies are often the most innovative and responsive to local conditions, but they also know only national governments have the resources, information, and international awareness to respond effectively to global changes in economic conditions.
Local partnerships constitute one of the best means for reducing this tension between national governments pursuing national economic goals and local actors who know their local economy's skill and qualification requirements. The conflict is potentially greater in an ever-widening European Union. It is therefore essential that EU policies are based on a critical appraisal of the success of particular types of partnerships. Only then can they be adapted for implementation at the EU level. Three criteria can be applied in such an appraisal: (1) the extent of participation of relevant local and regional training experts, (2) the degree of the partnership's labor market responsiveness, and (3) its success in providing a continuum of lifelong training services.
It is clear that local partnerships alone are not enough. They must be assisted by national and multinational governmental bodies in meeting international class standards. Exposure to international conditions will enhance a local partnership's ability to participate in the modernization and innovation taking place in international industry. And it will help them to develop qualification systems that enhance the "portability" of skills and mobility of workers. One of the prevalent European partnership models is the regional training consortium. It strikes a reasonable balance between national needs and local innovation.
The 1994 European Commission White Paper entitled Growth, Competitiveness, Employment: The Challenges and Ways Forward into the 21st Century identified how Europe should move into the 21st century and covered the overall contribution that training partnerships should make. The White Paper prescribed that training partnerships should
Jacques Delors, the former President of the European Commission, has often talked about the challenges Europeans are facing and the possible consequences of Europe's present position. He has argued that all these economic, technological, and structural responses are likely to fail unless they support a new idea about society as a whole--the concept of the "active society."
This notion of an "active society" is best described in the Preamble to the White Paper as
[a key means of reconciling] the aims pursued by society (work as a factor of social integration, equality of opportunity) and the requirements of the economy (competitiveness and job creation). . . . Revival requires a society driven by citizens who are aware of their own responsibilities and imbued with a spirit of solidarity towards those with whom they form local and national communities--communities that are so rich in history and in their common feeling of belonging.In the history of education and training in the United States, the concept of "responsible citizenship" has equal importance to that of "productive employment," and also emerges from a similar tradition. The tradition in Europe is somewhat different: Economic efficiency rests primarily on the capacity of individuals, but above all, it depends on associations, or groups of partners, acting together in the service of common objectives.
It is in supporting this concept of the active society, of cooperation among partners, and of innovation, that the European Community has launched a number of programs and community initiatives since the beginning of the 1980s. All help to create real local training partnerships. There are two main types of training programs: those run by the European Social Fund (briefly discussed below) and community action programs (which are the main focus of this paper). The original impetus for the latter comes from Article 128 of the Treaty of Rome (now covered and expanded by Article 127 of the Treaty of Maastricht) and to Council Decision 63/266/EEC of 2 April 1963 laying down general principles implementing a common vocational training policy. The bulk of these programs were launched after 1985.1
These partnerships came up with the concept of formation-développement (Senault, 1988)--training as a means of economic development.
The spirit of this formation-développement can be captured in five main themes:
These University Enterprise Training Partnerships (UETPs), as they are called, now total 202. They are situated inside organizations directly involved in regional development--Regional Development Agencies and Regional Technology Centers--or within regional government bodies. They are also implanted in organizations that bring together companies, like chambers of commerce and industry, or centers for company and enterprise development.
The activities of these UETPs at the regional level have largely served to demonstrate two significant local problems. The first problem is that there are very serious skill shortages, and that they are widespread. The second is that, generally speaking, training provision is poorly adapted to real market needs.
The UETPs have therefore helped to set up an enormous number of training courses. On the one hand, they have involved universities in new fields of economic development in their regions, and on the other hand they have offered companies the chance to improve the qualifications of their workers and expose themselves to the most productive working methods and techniques.
The first priority of these consortia is to analyze the needs of companies and workers as local labor markets change, and as industries change their processes of production, technology, and work organization. The product of this is a very close diagnosis of the training content, equipment, and methods necessary for workers to develop and advance within their current jobs. It also aids their mobility to seek other jobs, perhaps in other areas.
These consortia are equally concerned with doing everything necessary to create the circumstances in which existing training facilities can be shared within a locality. They do not stop at current facilities and resources--they are also, where possible, concerned with creating new structures between companies. These structures allow their resources to be committed to better training of local workers and to generating a more competitive edge among local companies.
For instance, training consortia exist in order to identify the training needs of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the rural peripheral regions of Europe, and to prompt the development of materials to train the managers and owners of small companies in a Euro-region. They are also serving to maintain employment by raising the qualification and skill levels of workers and to train Euro-advisors in local or regional development.
This role as "interface" creates organizations that can respond to the changing skill requirements facing the particular regions concerned. The industrial, technological, cultural, and social changes are too complex to be efficiently understood by one agency or by one type of organization alone. The overall nature and the complexity of the concept of change needs to be analyzed, identified, and taken into account through working collaboration between the various people active at the regional level. Adaptation to change can also be facilitated by partnerships establishing new frontiers between education and training, between initial and continuing training, and between training and research.
Their focus is on the employment and innovation potential of small companies; and their effect is to establish partnerships between small companies, training providers, social partners, and public authorities. The goal is to establish at one and the same time an approach to improving skills and qualifications, and an effort to identify new jobs.
At the same time, the ultimate purpose of these learning regions is to consolidate and augment the local economic infrastructure. In fact, the concept of the learning region finally makes sense in the desire of companies themselves to develop a capacity for training and the means to deliver it. Thus, they become true learning enterprises.
The guidelines for setting up ways to implement learning region structures are listed below. They were developed through a study of different regional experiences. A learning region needs to do the following:
These TECs, numbering more than 80 in England and Wales (with a parallel system of just over 20 in Scotland), deliver government training programs at a local level. Their primary focus is to involve companies of all sizes in this operation, but also to help cater to the specific training needs of small companies.
In doing this they are tied fairly strictly to a number of government rules. Companies must train their employees in such a way that their skills can be recognized by the new national qualification structure--the National Vocational Qualifications. Government money is tied to training that is recognized in this way, and all young people's training is now structured in order to conform to its various levels of qualification.
The government has also exerted pressure on companies to become what are called "Investors in People"--employers who can demonstrate in a number of approved ways that they regularly train their workers, maintain a training plan, and evaluate the results of training. They must also consciously identify economic and commercial objectives for their training. Companies that provide subcontracted services for the TECs--the local private training sector--are required to become Investors in People. If they do not acquire this form of accreditation within a certain time, they can no longer tender for new work.
The TECs also carry out regular analyses on the evolution of the local labor market, and they provide the results to the Department of Employment and integrate these results into their own planning. These analyses are used specifically to justify their planning of the work they carry out in order to help stimulate job and business formation and to train unemployed men and women to re-enter the labor market.
Established by agreement in 1993, the Italian joint bodies, for the moment just established as experiments in Piedmont and Lombardy, have the task of creating a new dynamic at the regional level by
The first of these criteria is the extent to which local and regional training experts are involved. Experience from the EU shows that only partnerships capable of bringing together the widest range of local operators, including public authorities, companies, unions, and training and expert bodies, are truly capable of integrating training and qualification initiatives at the heart of local development policies.
The second criterion for innovation relates to the manner in which these partnerships make the supply of training dependent on the demand for it. Here again, European experience shows consortia that analyze the training and qualification needs of companies and individuals in the local labor market are the best suited to defining the most responsive content, setting, and approach for training.
The final criterion for innovation concerns the way in which these partnerships develop the interface between initial and continuing training and technological transfer. Those which play this role--applying what the new European training program, LEONARDO DA VINCI (Council Decision 94/819/EC, 1994), calls the principle of continuum--are the ones which become truly effective in comparative terms and in terms of the jobs they create. Today, it is no longer possible to talk in isolation about young people's transition to work, the employability of adults, or the adaptation to new technologies of workers in companies undergoing change. The partnerships emerging in Europe are beginning to take into account the need to involve the whole vocational training field closely in both the analysis of the key issues and in the implementation of training policies and initiatives.
These common convictions, which have been defined and negotiated between the member states and the social partners, are the springboards for launching innovative local training partnerships.
Partnerships need to be confronted with the training and qualification realities of other countries and other regions. They will then be able to judge the performance of their local training efforts in a broader context, and enrich their training system by drawing on the experience of others, both colleagues and competitors.
If a partnership incorporates aspects of other nations' training standards into its own program, these changes may give program participants access to the most advanced innovations in a common training and qualification area and to qualifications which are more readily transferable--in American parlance, portable skills. Because of the increasingly global nature of markets, training and learning must become a world, rather than just a European, reality.
As a consequence, the idea of a transnational exchange and transfer networks between local training partnerships seems to be one of the most effective means of preparing ourselves for skill and training needs induced by the constant change which is affecting everyone. Only such a global network can prepare young people and adults for a world in which competition, and hopefully also cooperation, will become a reality on both sides of the Atlantic.
1 For a summary, see EC Education and Training Programmes 1986-1992, Results and Achievements: An Overview (1993).
2 See Council Decision 90/267/EEC (1990), p. 1; and European Commission (1994), notably Part B, The Interim Evaluation of FORCE, Conclusions and Recommendations, the Tavistock Institute, Groupe Quaternaire, and the Dansk Teknologisk Institut.
3 The `Tableau de Bord' on Continuing Vocational Training (European Commission, FORCE Program, 1994) provides information inter alia relevant structure in all the former twelve member states of the EU.
4 See Chapter 2.4, "Die `LERNENDE REGION' als Modell für regionale Entwicklung," LERNENDE REGION, Kooperationen zur Verbindung von Bildung und Beschaftigüng in Europa (1994). This publication also includes articles in English.
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Council Decision 94/819/EC. (1994, June 12). Official Journal of the European Communities, No L 340, 29.12.94, p. 8.
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Growth, competitiveness, employment: The challenges and ways forward into the 21st century (European Commission White Paper). (1994). (ISBN 92-826-7423-1 [Parts A + B], ISBN 92-826-7071-6 [Part C]).
Isfol Strumenti e ricerche. (1994). Analisi della politica contrattuale nel camp della formazione continua, Rapporto sull'Italia er il programma FORCE, FrancoAngeli (ISBN 88-204-8486-2).
LERNENDE REGION, Kooperationen zur Verbindung von Bildung und Beschaftigüng in Europa. (1994). Publication from the Europäisches Seminar in Berlin on September 23-24, 1994. Salzgitter and Berline: Friedrichsdorfer Büro für Bildungsplanung.
Senault, P. (1988). Formation et territoires: La formation-développement. Editions Syros Alternative-Adels.
