The renewed legislation on vocational education and training will be implemented in 1.1.2018. The reform will change qualification structure, funding and methods in education system. The current supply-oriented approach will be refocused into a demand-driven approach. The goal of the reform is to create VET-system which will respond to the expectations of work life which are needed after 2020.

Kari Puumalainen, Director of Ylä-Savo Municipal Federation of Education, member of EfVET Steering Committee

For students reform gives more chances to study in educational institutions, at workplaces and in digital learning environments even better than nowadays.

Qualification structure will be changed from a total of 351 vocational qualifications to 164. The biggest change will effect on vocational adult education and training where there will be new qualifications which are more broad-based than they are at the moment.

The reform will also increase working life orientated ways of learning. It will change also the ways of on-the-job learning.  The use of apprenticeship training will be added and the new training agreement and also the flexible combination of training agreement and apprenticeship are implemented in VET.

The new funding system will be implemented

Funding is divided in three parts: 50% of total funding is based on volume of students, 35 % of funding on the basis of all completed qualifications and parts of qualifications and 15 % of funding on the basis of employment and transfer to further studies.

The education providers are mostly supporting the reform. The situation is still quite challenging because of the large-scale budget cuts which has been implemented in 2014 – 2017. The scale of budget cuts has varied from 10 – 35 % of total funding depending the structure and location of education provider.

The change of training models will also reform the work and profession of vocational teacher. Work will concentrate more in students’ skills and competences and teacher will be more like coach or mentor to help student to achieve his/hers personal goals. This will be supported by other specialists and also workplace instructors.

The target, financial model and the timescale are tight but I believe that through the reform the Finnish Vocational system will help to develop even more high-class system which will support future’s workers even better than nowadays. It will also give new possibilities and tools for internationalization VET.

Read more about the Finnish VET reform here