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SYSTEMIC PARTNERSHIP RELATIONS IN LIFELONG EDUCATION
T. Yu. Lomakina
This article discusses some theoretical and methodological problems of the modern model of partnership and practice of their implementation at different levels of government.
Key words: model, partnerships, social partnership, continuous education, training of professionals, labor market, levels of governance, factors.
Modeling a new system of partnership is meant to help educational establishments take into account the requirements of employers’ and educational service consumers, and immediately react to changes in the labor market situation. The subjects of the partnership model are vocational education establishments, employers, trade unions and other workers’ associations, employment services, individual customers, and legislative and executive authorities of different levels. The most important thing is that they interact to mutual benefit, and enjoy equal rights. As such, interaction requires high-quality professional training that influences solving social problems, settling conflicts with employers, and lowering social tension in the society.
The following factors have an impact on the organization and development of partnership: inconsistence of the market mechanism of professional training and re-training; lack of analysis and forecast of demand for the labor force, including different professions; information deficit on the educational services market; absence of preferential taxation policy concerning both educational establishments and employers; deficiencies of laws regulating the sphere of educational services, etc. The international experience, where partnership is a natural form of existence of the vocational training system, and the analysis of partnership relations established in Russia in the sphere of education, allows for singling out several main areas of partnership model formation.
The area related to political decisions calls for determining national priorities and objectives of vocational training; determining the government’s role in regulating the employers’ investments into the vocational training system and further personnel training, as well as social support of students, employees and the unemployed.
Within the second area, the managerial issues of partnership are to be solved, including defining the current and future demand for qualified specialist training in certain regions and at separate educational institutions, establishing management of funds; participation in the management of the educational establishment through representation in its managerial board; and provision of joint paid services in the sphere of professional training and retraining.
The next area refers to joint planning of the content of professional training, including: development of professional qualification requirements, preparation and expertise of state educational standards in vocational training, participation in the development and approbation of basic vocational training curriculum; development of testing programs for students and graduates; participation in intermediate and final attestation of students and graduates and awarding qualification levels to
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them; provision of qualified employees as engineering teachers and professional masters for vocational training establishments, etc.
One of the areas of partnership refers to a certain autonomy of educational establishments, and is aimed at defining the requirements for certain professional qualifications, and development of a corporate syllabus; employment of advanced equipment of employers for training students during their professional practice and for improving the teachers’ knowledge and skills; joint participation in the organization and maintenance of the teaching process, etc.
The new model of social partnership must be considered on a wide scale, which is caused by the formation and development of the global education area, and is influenced by the intensified processes of globalization. New processes of cooperation between educational establishment of different levels, as well as between scientific institutions in the sphere of education and their partners abroad in order to increase the quality of national education have started and are developing internationally. Such cooperation is conducted in different forms: student exchanges; theoretical and practical conferences, joint monographs and collection of scientific works, etc.
Great work in this sphere is being done by the National UNESCO/UNEVOC Centre in the Russian Federation, which is an integral part of the RAE Institute of Theory and History of Pedagogy, being since 2012 the coordinator in the area of vocational training in the CIS countries. The activity of the National UNEVOC Centre is aimed at solving the following problems: (a) consolidation of comprehensive educational resources for modernization of vocational training and formation of the lifelong education system; (b) establishment of international contacts with foreign countries for exchange of opinions and experience in the formation of national qualification frameworks and the lifelong education system; (c) informing the scientific and educational community about innovative processes aimed at restructuring regional educational establishment networks; (d) providing scientific and methodological advice on creating innovative curricula and development programs of schools and regional educational systems complying to modern requirements of vocational training; (e) assistance in selection of social partners, etc. The National UNESCO/UNEVOC Centre in the RF has regional Branches whose activity is directed at three application areas (educational, scientific and research) and is aimed at the development of lifelong education. Conferences, round tables, methodological seminars, training, research projects, etc., are organized within these areas, dedicated to the problems of theory and practice of lifelong education.
On the national level, the social partnership is institutionally organized within the ministries of education, economy, labor and finance, which elaborate the general framework for the development of vocational training system in the aspect of its financial and legal support. On the same level, various consultative councils and committees, mostly at the social partners’ initiative, which ensure the contact of the vocational training system with the labor market, are organized, as well as public funds and other entities within which the employers (employers’ associations) and employees (trade unions) discuss issues of mutual interest. Their decisions and recommendations are subsequently included into collective agreements. On the regional level, regional councils and committees are
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organized, which analyze and forecast the labor market, develop curricula, and prepare teaching material and qualification requirements for examinations with the involvement of interested subjects of social partnership. On the local level, the partnership is realized within certain autonomy of educational establishments. In this case, the educational establishments or their groups cooperate directly with the companies or their groups in the sphere of development of the training content in each vocational qualification. Business and education representatives develop joint corporate syllabi for employee training. The companies provide advanced equipment for students’ professional practice, and participate in organization and maintenance of the training process, while the teaching staff members have the opportunity to gain practical experience at working with new technologies at the companies’ production facilities.
It should be noted that the business community of Russia has not yet become a full-fledged partner of the government in the development of society’s human resources. The contribution of private capital to financing the educational sphere of Russia is only 2%. During the 2.5 years since the adoption of the law on endowment funds, only about a dozen such special purpose funds have been created.
The contemporary model of social partnership embraces the following spheres of activity of educational establishments: (a) professional training; (b) financing and economy; (c) social welfare and social support; (d) provision of material basis and raw material resources for training; (e) scientific support and human resources provision.
The given model opens the following additional opportunities directly for educational establishments: access to information about the labor market in the region is facilitated (which professionals and in which amount are needed by the labor market); the employers’ requirements towards the scope of training in the educational establishment is taken into account (professional profiles, qualification requirements); new joint commercial projects are initiated for replenishment of off-budget assets of educational establishments (establishment of further training courses for company employees, creation of joint workshops, shops, companies, service centers, etc.) and the like.
The creation of the mechanism of efficient social partnership is the movement of education and production towards one another. This partnership model efficiency criterion is the realization of the main objective of the educational establishments - the demand for their graduates in the labor market and provision of jobs to them. The demand for the services of educational establishments, the growth in numbers of their students, recruited not only among school graduates but other categories as well, mostly the adult unemployed population trying to obtain a new profession, are closely connected to the above.
Reference Literature
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3. Ломакина Т. Ю. Ресурсные центры профессионального образования. ж. «Отечественная и зарубежная педагогика». № 3 (6). - М.: ФГНУ ИТИП РАО, 2012.
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Translated from Russian by Znanije Central Translastions Bureas
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