Many companies experience problems in finding adequate staff by quantitative and qualitative discrepancies between their demand for qualified workers and the availability of proper educated youngsters. A major cause seems to be located in the potential tension between nationally defined qualifications (professional profiles) on the one hand and the great diversity of needs and desires of enterprises as well as students and workers on the other hand. The main discussion, regulation system and research projects on vocational education and business take place at system or industry level. It has become more important to focus on individual companies and regional networks.

A second topic is the divided responsibility for the implementation of training. Companies deliver practice training (apprenticeship) as part of the education deliver by schools, but get little information about educational objectives and practices of the school, nor about the tasks and assignments students should do. They are also hardly involved in  assessment. They have no influence on hat students learn at school.  This is increasingly seen as undesirable. Companies are often not satisfied with the results of vocational education.  The proportion of workplace learning in all levels and courses of vocational and professional education has increased. There are considerable costs involved. So it is important that companies also can have a say about the requirements and expectations that are linked to it.  The impact of business on the education to enhance searches for opportunities for shared accountability. In that context, attention is paid to the strengthening of public-private partnerships.

The paper reports on an exploratory series of case studies on effective forms of cooperation between companies and secondary and higher vocational education, seen from the perspective of companies.

In the paper results of several case studies will be presented on effective and innovative examples of cooperation between individual companies and individual VET and Professional schools. Schools and businesses give shape to new challenges in order to improve education through cooperation and responsiveness to the needs of companies as well as a diverse student population. 

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