The Vocational Education and Training System in Ireland

Introduction

The European Union has operated programmes that support the mobility of vocational learners for more than 30 years. The PETRA, Leonardo da Vinci Mobility, and Erasmus+ programmes have all sought to enhance the quality of vocational education and training (VET) in Europe, and have all included funding for vocational learners to spend short periods of time abroad for work experience and training. PETRA presented these ‘mobility periods’ as a ‘measure to increase the esteem for training in general, and to motivate participants’. The European programme Erasmus+ views learning mobility as a tool to ‘improve the level of key competences and skills, with particular regard to their relevance for the labour market and their contribution to a cohesive society’, and as a means to strengthen cooperation between education and training and the world of work. National policy also recognises the importance of mobility: ‘Ensure provision facilitates mobility across Europe and globally’ is one of the actions listed under strategic objective 5, ‘Standing of FET: Promote and provide high-quality FET responsive to the needs of industry and learners’ in the Further Education and Training Strategy 2014–2019.

The purpose of this study is to trace the impact these transnational vocational work placements have had on the skills, attitudes, education and careers of vocational learners from Ireland since the time they took part. The study is part of a wider transnational research project involving 10 European partners. In each of the 10 countries, the National Agency with responsibility for Erasmus+ VET carried out research focused on its own population. All countries used an agreed research model, as initially developed by the Polish National Agency, FRSE, for its 2019 research report 'Erasmus...and what next?'. The research data was aggregated and a comparative report produced.3 Although Erasmus+ and its predecessors are standardised programmes, designed by the European Commission to be implemented in largely the same way in each participating country, each member state has its own vocational system. There is huge variation in the scope, size and structure of these systems across Europe. The project partners therefore envisioned that comparing results between countries would enable common trends and patterns among vocational learners to emerge, and contrasts to be observed. It is hoped that findings will illuminate how learning mobility might best function within each system.

The Vocational Education and Training System in Ireland

In Ireland, vocational education and training is firmly part of the formal education system – although it is more commonly known here as further education and training, or FET. For this reason, in this study ‘FET’ will generally be used to refer to the Irish system and ‘VET’ to the European. In keeping with this flexibility of terms, the definition of FET in Ireland is itself somewhat fluid. The Department of Education and Skills describes it as ‘education and training which occurs after second level schooling but which is not part of the third level system’4. This definition is based on the division of the Irish education system described in Table 1.

3 ‘Tracing VET Graduates With Foreign Mobility Experience’ (Fassl, Kirsch et al, 2020) https://www.frse.org.pl/czytelnia/tracing-vet-graduates-with-foreignmobility-experience