DIA-CVET – Developing Innovative and Attractive CVET programmes in industrial shoe production

In many countries like Romania (RO) and Portugal (PT) Vocational Education and Training (VET) is considered as second choice; as an educational pathway for those who failed in reaching Higher Education (HE). One of the main reasons of this rather poor image of VET is that it often must be considered as a “dead-end” educational pathway; once you started a “blue collar” job; no or only few options of career opportunities in terms of Continuous Vocational Education and Training (CVET) exist. Thus, more challenging occupations like working for the Quality Assurance (QA), Design or Production Planning departments are reserved for colleagues with an educational background from HE. But even in countries with established CVET-programmes like Germany (DE), where the qualifications of an industrial or handicraft foreman or technician are country-wide acknowledged and have a very good image, the academic drift is obvious. For our sector (industrial shoe production) a worrying indicator is: In the last two years, when the only industrial foreman course for this occupation was offered, not enough participants (countrywide only six needed) applied – and the courses had to be withdrawn.