Technical, economical, and social changes place great demands on the qualification of professional forces in all areas of the national economy. The decisive foundations for these qualifications are built in vocational education. Vocational education is an investment in the future and one of the decisive pillars of the prosperity of every state in…

Designing a video game design and development curriculum in higher education is a challenging task. Information about the needs of the respective industry certainly helps. In this paper, we have surveyed Estonian video game development companies to determine their current needs when it comes to knowledge areas, software tools, languages,…

Qualifications frameworks are tools for describing qualifications of an education or training system by classifying them into levels. Each level provides a clear description of what the holder of a qualification knows, understands and is able to do. They are important tools for making qualifications transparent and comprehensible, within and…

The study discusses how vocational education changes in Estonia have been perceived by vocational teachers. Vocational teachers have been challenged in terms of making sense of and adapting to the educational changes triggered by reform policies introduced in recent decades. As reforms have often not been implemented as planned, it is essential to…

Qualifications frameworks are tools for describing qualifications of an education or training system by classifying them into levels. Each level provides a clear description of what the holder of a qualification knows, understands and is able to do. They are important tools for making qualifications transparent and comprehensible, within and…

England has a 'pre-qualification' system of higher education admissions, where applications and offers are made to young people before exam results are received. While in most cases offers are conditional on achieving a grade target in A Level exams, recent years have seen an exponential growth in 'unconditional offers', where the offer of a place…

This chapter applies a Welfare Regimes framework to further examine the processes of domestic adaptation to the Youth Guarantee (YG) in Austria, Bulgaria, Denmark, Estonia, Belgium, Italy, Slovakia, Spain and the United Kingdom. It connects the evidence from Chaps. 9 [ED616380]-17 [ED616377] to selected Welfare State Regimes' (WSRs)…

This chapter provides an in-depth analysis of Estonia's response to the European-level Recommendation on Youth Guarantee (YG). It provides the context explaining a range of policy interventions and conditions existing in Estonia before the adaptation to the YG. The chapter explores what opportunities the Estonian policy-makers saw in the YG to…

In this report on education systems in Repeatedly High Performing Jurisdictions (RHPJs) the authors present data on the assessment approaches used at the end of basic secondary education. These assessments are conducted at around the age of 16, at approximately the stage when students in England, Wales and Northern Ireland take the General…

This paper presents the findings of a study into the application process of the professional standards (PS) qualification in Estonia, which is a standard used to identify the level of professionalism of a teacher. The study collected the views of active teachers who have applied for the PS and those of the assessors to understand the shortcomings…

Automation and advanced technologies have increased the need for a better understanding of the skills necessary to have a globally competitive workforce. This study used data from the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies to compare problem-solving skills in technology-rich environments among adults in South Korea,…

Automation and advanced technologies have increased the need for a better understanding of the skills necessary to have a globally competitive workforce. This study used data from the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies to compare problem solving skills in technology rich environments among adults in South Korea,…

A national qualifications framework (NQF) is an instrument used to classify a country's qualifications at different levels. Each level is defined by a set of learning outcomes expected at that level. NQFs can be useful tools in education and training reforms and are vital reference points for lifelong learning and comparing qualifications across…

Concise, clear and comprehensive snapshots of vocational education and training systems in EU, Iceland and Norway: this is what the Cedefop Spotlight on VET series offers. Building on individual country Spotlights, this publication provides an overview of VET systems with their distinctive qualities, such as main accession and progression routes…

Background: Educational qualifications and literacy skills are highly related. This is not surprising as it is one aim of educational systems to equip individuals with competencies necessary to take part in society. Because of this relationship educational qualifications are often used as a proxy for "human capital". However, from a…