On February 17-18, a national workshop on the perspectives of Ukrainian vocational education for 2009 was held in Puscha-Vodytsia (Kyiv). The seminar was co-organized by the MES, the Decentralized Management of Skills Training in Ukraine project and by the EU project “Improving the efficiency of vocational education management on the regional level in Ukraine”.

The two-day seminar was attended by deputy directors of regional education department, directors of regional vocational centres, MES staff, experts from the Institute of Innovative Technologies and the Content of Education, the APS of Ukraine, the Canadian Embassy, the European Commission’s Delegation, and other organizations (over 90 participants). The Minister of Education and Science, Dr. Ivan Vakarchuk, took part in the seminar. His speech focused on the prospects for vocational education. The first day was devoted to discussing a number of important issues in the skills training system and exchanging experience between all the players of the vocational education. The second day presented the impacts of the DMSTU project and the EU project on the Ukrainian skills training system.

The Canadian project presented, among other things, its outputs in developing the most powerful web resource of vocational education (www.proftechosvita.org.ua) and implementing gender and social equity policy in vocational schools. According to the latest statistics, there are over 400 daily hits on the web-portal, and there have been over 20,000 hits from all Ukrainian regions and more than 20 other countries over the last three months. The seminar also provided the opportunity to disseminate all project publications (11 manuals, newsletters, 2 specialized journals, a booklet on the web-portal, a network newsletter, calendars, etc)