Education and competences in South East Europe

To improve education and competencies is to build the knowledge, skills and capacities of everyone in society. This chapter on the Education and Competences Dimension analyses performance and policy development through five sub-dimensions. The High-Quality Education Sub-Dimension examines quality and equity in early childhood, primary, secondary, initial vocational and higher education as well as teacher recruitment, retention and development. The Early-School Leaving Prevention Sub-Dimension evaluates strategies to prevent early leaving from primary to higher education. The Qualification Recognition Sub-Dimension assesses quality assurance agencies and the implementation of national qualifications frameworks. The Labour Market Alignment Sub-Dimension considers to what degree education is aligned with labour market needs, career guidance services and lifelong learning programmes. The Entrepreneurial Learning Sub-Dimension describes the extent to which SEE economies promote entrepreneurial learning and enterprise skills at all levels of education and training through policy development and evaluation and university-enterprise co-operation.