European Economic and Social Committee
NAT/650
Vocational training in rural
areas
Brussels, 30 March 2015
REVISED PRELIMINARY DRAFT OPINION
of the
Section for Agriculture, Rural Development and the Environment
on
Vocational development and training in rural areas
(own-initiative opinion)
_____________
Rapporteur: Brendan Burns
Co-Rapporteur: Pavel Trantina
_____________
To the members of the
Section for Agriculture, Rural Development and the Environment
N.B.:
This document will be discussed at the meeting on 9 April 2015 beginning at a.m.
Document submitted for translation: 23 March 2015
Administrator: Stella Brozek-Everaert
NAT/650 – EESC-2014-06815-00-01-APA-TRA (EN) 1/9
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EN
Study Group on
President:
Vocational training in rural
areas
Rapporteur:
Co-rapporteur:
Members:
Ms Agudo i Bataller (ES-II)
Mr Burns (UK-I)
Mr Trantina (CZ-III)
Mr/Ms
Boland (IE-III)
Espuny Moyano (ES-I)
Kliś (PL-I)
Preidiene (LT-II)
Soares (PT-II)
Willems (LU-III)
Expert:
(for the rapporteur)
NAT/650 – EESC-2014-06815-00-01-APA-TRA (EN) 2/9
On 10 July 2014, the European Economic and Social Committee, acting under Rule 29(2) of its Rules
of Procedure, decided to draw up an own-initiative opinion on
Vocational development and training in rural areas
(own-initiative opinion).
The Section for Agriculture, Rural Development and the Environment, which was responsible for
preparing the Committee's work on the subject, adopted its opinion on … The rapporteur was
Mr Brendan Burns and the co-rapporteur Mr Pavel Trantina.
At its… plenary session (meeting of…), the European Economic and Social Committee adopted the
following opinion by… votes to…with ... abstentions:
*
*
*
1.
Recommendations
2.
Background
2.1
The sustainability of disadvantaged, rural, remote, mountain and island areas in Europe is an
issue that is causing great concern to many politicians, environmentalists, employers,
economists and members of the public. These areas not only provide food and raw materials
to be used in towns and cities; they also provide the space that the rest of society needs when
it wants to escape, relax and reconnect with some of its most basic physical and emotional
needs.
2.2
Over the past century, people have been encouraged to improve their wealth and living
standards by migrating to towns and cities. This has resulted in many rural and remote areas
becoming seriously disadvantaged and economically unsustainable. The loss of people and
resources from our most rural and remote areas is now becoming an urgent problem.
2.3
Agriculture is only one example that will eventually fail to supply the food that we presently
take for granted. Wood from our forests: hotels for people to stay in when on holiday and
hundreds of arts and craft businesses will all be at risk unless the problems being faced by
Europe's rural, remote, mountain and island areas are addressed as matter of priority.
2.4
Key to solving this problem is encouraging people to return to these rural areas but, to achieve
this, we have to address the economic and social issues currently placing the inhabitants of
such areas at a disadvantage. This requires a new agenda that will encourage governments,
businesses and other organisations to improve cooperation and re-evaluate the wider benefits
that these rural and remote areas offer to the rest of society.
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2.5
The ability of businesses to operate in these difficult locations is a priority because, without
the jobs and wealth that businesses create, people will not move. However, employers cannot
improve the skills of existing employees and train new employees without the cooperation of
local schools: technical colleges and universities. These institutions need to recognise the
special needs of rural and remote businesses and provide appropriate training that will enable
students and employees to become valuable members of teams that will perform the tasks
necessary for businesses to survive and thrive.
2.6
Schools - Provide basic skills, reading, writing, socialising, etc.
2.7
Technical Training Centres (TTC) – providing training in vocational skills - develop
knowledge and abilities that will give students/employees the skills they will require to
perform the tasks associated with the industry they are entering. TTC need to provide both
full-time and part-time courses and students may either attend on a full-time basis or on dayrelease from their employers.
2.8
Universities – academic institutions that develop in-depth knowledge of the student/employee
so that they can perform more complicated tasks and use their knowledge to help their
employers to improve products, services and the management of the business to make it more
sustainable, efficient and profitable.
2.9
In-house training – where the employer trains its employees to perform vocational tasks that
are specific to that business e.g. specialist equipment, customer requirements, specific
limitations imposed upon the business or the specialisation of services or manufacturing.TTC
should work with employers to ensure that any in-house training provided by employers will
be accepted as counting towards credits for Vocational Qualifications (VQs), Lifelong
Learning (LLL) or Continual Professional Development (CPD).
2.10
Access to vocational training (VT) for employees and students is vitally important, especially
in disadvantaged rural, mountain and islands areas (all of which are remote). Unfortunately,
most VT facilities are based in densely-populated areas, which means that students and
employees from rural and remote areas attending short or day-release courses are greatly
disadvantaged due to their need to travel long distances to reach these centres. In most cases,
this will incur additional costs and considerable inconvenience, especially if training does not
fit in with the work schedules of employees.
2.11
For many trainees, especially those on day-release, this disconnect between where they live
and where they have to go to study acts as a barrier, which pushes young people to move
permanently to larger towns and cities.
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2.12
Although education and training is important, it is only one of the reasons why people migrate
away from rural and remote communities. The lack of opportunities for employment or selfemployment is one of the main drivers for this migration. When faced with the options of:


living where there are few or no prospects for advancement, or
moving to a larger town or city where there is work and there are better opportunities for
social engagement,
most young people will choose to migrate to the cities.
2.13
The loss of these young people from rural communities often begins a downward economic
and social spiral that gains momentum as more people migrate. The loss of population
reduces the amount of money circulating within a community, which then affects the viability
of local businesses, shops, and transport links. This is further compounded by the eventual
loss of medical services, schools and other social facilities.
2.14
Several education schemes have been developed to slow migration. Unfortunately, too many
of these schemes have been based upon "urban solutions" which are not relevant to rural areas
and have had insufficient long-term financial and infrastructural support to guarantee their
survival.
2.15
For rural communities to survive, all facilities should be used for the common good. Being
told by a government official that the local school cannot be used for adult training classes
because it is overseen by a different government department, or because there is no insurance
cover for adult learners exemplifies the kind of barriers that can stop local initiatives meeting
an identified need. To get around these problems, there must be closer cooperation and a
greater understanding of the problems by both the local authorities and the initiators of
projects.
3.
The rural business perspective
3.1
Employment in rural and remote areas is not always understood by city-centric educational
institutions. Most Vocational Training (VT) courses are driven by the supply side rather than
the demand side, which follows a single-model approach that has to fit all circumstances.
3.2
This may satisfy the educational institutions, but it consistently fails to meet the needs of
employers and their employees especially if the employee/student is on a course that operates
on a day-release basis and where travel is difficult.
3.3
This single-model solution also fails to address the fact that most VET courses have been
developed to meet the needs of large companies where new employees are recruited locally
from a pool of readily-available candidates and the workplace is organised under various
departments and managers. Employees are therefore recruited to learn a specific 'job'. This
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industrial mass-production type of work relies on having everyone performing well-defined
tasks and carrying out procedures that can be easily evaluated and qualifications created to
accredit the ‘job’.
3.4
In contrast, most micro- and small businesses in rural and remote locations have limited
access to a pool of potential candidates and employees need to be much more multi-skilled
and flexible rather than being employed to do one specific job. These employees will also
work in very small teams, often consisting of no more than three people who, will have to
perform all the tasks needed to run the business.
3.5
There is a need to develop new VT and VQs for micro- and small businesses based on
empirical evidence of the tasks that are actually carried out rather than assuming that small
businesses are nothing more than smaller versions of big companies. This assumption has
proven to be false and is one of the main reasons why we have a 'skills mismatch' between
education and employment.
3.6
Rural businesses also use a different operational concept, based upon the skills needed to
"repair and restore" rather than the industrial model of "remove and refit". This is another
major difference, as it requires additional skills: those of identifying problems and then
repairing or restoring, rather than today's approach of testing, removing, ordering new parts
and refitting. The failure by the organisations that develop vocational standards to identify
this basic problem has resulted in many European micro- and small businesses rejecting the
current VT and VQs that have been developed for their industries.
3.7
This problem does not just affect one sector of business. It has been identified by micro-,
small and medium-sized businesses in engineering, architecture, agriculture, construction,
forestry and a multitude of other areas.
3.8
Due to this problem of distance from training centres, many employers cooperate informally
and share the training of employees. Each business then teaches the person how to do certain
specialist tasks. While this approach to vocational training does meet employers' immediate
needs, it does not help the employee to get a qualification or accreditation of prior Learning
(APL) for the skills they have acquired.
3.9
As businesses develop and introduce more technology and new equipment, this type of Life
Long Learning (LLL) is essential. Unfortunately, support mechanisms such as access to
online industry training videos, online manuals and online demonstrations are often not
available, due to slow broadband speeds. Until broadband speeds can be greatly improved
much more pre-recorded training and demonstration videos need to be developed, along with
procedures for the validation of this type of prior learning.
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4.
The local community effect
4.1
At the hearing on "Vocational Development and Training in Rural Areas"1, the importance of
communities taking control of their problems and finding their own specific solutions was
repeated in several of the presentations. This evidence also raised other associated issues and
clearly showed that the improvement of VET had to be part of a much wider plan that
simultaneously addressed a combination of community problems.
4.2
Cooperation between all the involved actors is essential. To bring vocational training into
these communities, there is a need to engage with all local businesses, the school, the staff in
the school, the students (potential employees) the unemployed, volunteers and the long-term
needs of the community. In particular, it was identified as essential for local people to become
empowered and for some of them to become "drivers" (leaders) for change, so that the
community could develop their "own" solutions.
4.3
It was also identified that, relying on a few drivers instead of the whole community, can result
in the project failing if the "driver" migrates or has to leave. The need for political willpower
at local, regional and national government level to ensure such communities receive long term
financial and infrastructure support was also identified as a problem that needed to be
addressed.
4.4
Communications using mobile and land-line broadband was identified as an important
conduit for the development of Vocational Training, especially the development of ICT skills,
which are becoming essential in the workplace and in the home. Digital knowledge and skills
are required to use devices and to access services. These skills are now a core part of all
everyone's economic and social lives and should therefore cover all stages and forms of
education; from primary to adult education2. Policies also have to take into account the
characteristics of the local population in terms of age, educational attainment and income
levels.
4.5
Universal access to high-speed broadband is therefore crucial to promoting social and
territorial cohesion. The plans to expand the use of Structural and Rural Development funds
to supplement the rollout of commercially-viable broadband infrastructure are therefore
welcome. However, it is also critical that the benefits of this investment should flow to the
public through the provision of high-quality services (e.g. medical services, access to local
government, etc.), and a significant reduction in costs for all end-users. Public areas offering
free Wi-Fi access are also important to developing universal access to high-speed broadband
in small towns and villages.
1
2
Held at the EESC in Brussels on 28 January 2015.
TEN/557 Towards a thriving data-driven economy.
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4.6
It is recognised that the provision of VET in rural and remote areas is a complicated issue
requiring an integrated approach driven by each local community. It is therefore essential that
financial support is not founded on a purely commercial basis. Access to funds available in
the context of the LEADER approach and CLLD are essential. This will facilitate the role of
Local Action Groups (LAGs), community organisations and civil society by providing
sustained funding, involvement and assistance.
4.7
Civil society organisations should be encouraged to share examples of best practice and
innovative approaches to rural isolation3. Their representatives should be enabled to play an
active role in the governance structure of European funds that have an impact on rural
development (EAFRD, ESIF), participate in the oversight of monitoring committees at
national level, and involve local groups and vulnerable groups in the design and
implementation of projects. At the same time, they should inform the European Commission
of bad practices by Member States, in order to ensure that governments comply with their
obligations to consult and involve a variety of stakeholders (especially at the local level) in
the design, implementation and evaluation of European programmes.
5.
Further observations
5.1
This opinion has proven to be a very complicated issue. We could have gone into much more
depth on a wide variety of issues such as transport, rural housing, medical and social services,
the encouragement of rural businesses via tax incentives, the development of tourism and
many more ideas that were touched on in our discussions and during the hearing.
5.2
However, we recognise that these issues are the responsibility of other EESC sections that
have more experience and knowledge on these subjects. We therefore hope that the other
sections will consider contributing to this important issue of reversing the present trends in
migration from European rural and remote areas.
5.3
We could also have pointed out the many benefits that will accrue if our suggestions,
especially the ones on ICT and local empowerment, are supported and developed.
5.4
Instead of living crammed together in towns and cities; Europeans could be living in beautiful
rural surroundings and working from their homes using fast broadband while still retaining all
their links to the wider society. This does not have to be a dream, but to make it happen,
national governments need to re-evaluate the potential of their rural areas.
3
Such as the Volonteurope project on Rural Isolation of Citizens in Europe, http://www.volonteurope.eu/wpcontent/uploads/2014/12/Briefing-Rural-Isolation-Final-Layout.pdf.
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5.5
Instead of the rural areas of Europe suffering as a result of migration, we should recognise the
opportunities and support these areas, rather than ignoring them and concentrating on the
development of urbanisation and suburban sprawl.
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