Foundation for Development of Ukraine is to announce the contest within the framework of the project "Professional Ukraine" [Ukraina Professionalnaya], which should discover the most efficient interaction mechanisms between higher education establishments and companies ?employers.
 
This was reported by Anatoliy Zabolotny, the Director of the Foundation for Development of Ukraine, during the round table "Mechanisms of interaction between the system of education and employers in training professional staff for the labor market" organized by the Foundation in partnership with the Bureau for Economic and Social Technologies (BEST) and under the auspice of the World Bank.
 
During the round table the participants discussed the issues of compliance of professional training of graduates with the labor market requirements, the quality of curriculums, systems of external appraisal of graduates as well as the existing and possible options for cooperation of education establishments and business circles in professional staff training.
 
Among the participants there were: M.G. Lutskiy, Chief of the Supreme Rada Subcommittee for professional education issues K.M. Lyapina, Chief of Subcommittee for the regulatory policy and entrepreneurship of the SR Committee of Ukraine N.I. Zinkevich, Deputy Director of State Employment Service T.M. Desyatov, Director of the Vocational Training Department of the Ministry of Science and Education Timo Kuuselo, EU Counselor on the issues of education and training E.A. Bekh, a representative of the World Bank a specialist on the issues of education as well as representatives of large companies, organizations and associations of employers of Ukraine.
 
"Policies of different countries have proved that development of partnership between state and business is characterized by strengthening the strategic partnership. This can be seen through formation of mechanisms of state and business representation regarding the issues of education on the macro and micro levels. Partners become more open to each other and they use the schemes of joint public-private financing of training and research programs more often; the instrumental role of business in curriculum formation and education quality monitoring is getting stronger, noted Irina Akimova, the Director of BEST. At the same time simple forms of partnership are not passing away. They exist and keep developing along with the strategic forms being additional to them and ensuring flexibility and dynamism of partnership process. 
 
"The problem of compliance of education system with the fast growing labor market requirements is now becoming ever more urgent; however there is no solution to the problem right now and all the attempts to find the solutions are of declarative nature. And the partnership existing between higher education establishments and employers in Ukraine cannot replace the state education system. Our goal is to initiate the reform and to show the real situation in the field of vocational education," stated Anatoliy Zabolotny, "and it is possible only if we develop qualitative appraisal criteria for higher education establishments from the point of view of school leavers and employers. We hope that the contest results will help the school leavers of 2007 make the right choice and higher education establishments realize the necessity of partnership relations with employers".
 
Higher education establishments will be evaluated under the following criteria: level of interaction of higher education establishments with employers, demand for graduates at the labor market, career of graduates at the labor market and level of satisfaction of employers with the quality of graduates’ knowledge.
 
The application process is planned to be completed on May 10th, 2007 and the contest results will be announced till June 15th, 2007.
 
Reference
Foundation for Development of Ukraine is a non-profitable organization founded by SCM Group on July 15, 2005.
The budget of the Foundation is financed by SCM Company. The areas of activity of the Foundation include: contemporary education, health of the nation and cultural heritage.
The projects of the Foundation for Development of Ukraine are being implemented in seven Oblasts of Ukraine (Kyivskaya, Lvovskaya, Zakarpatskaya, Kharkovskaya, Luganskaya, Dnepropetrovskaya and Donetskaya Oblasts) and in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea.
 
BEST (Bureau for Economic and Social Technologies) - is one of the first private analytical centers in Ukraine established in 2006 upon the initiative of System Capital Management (SCM). The center provides independent analysis and consultations on a wide number of issues in the field of social and economic policy, thus supporting the development of public dialogue between business, power and public community and developing partnership relations with international organizations, Ukrainian analytical centers and home and foreign experts.