In the past 15 years, educational reforms have been implemented in Bosnia and Herzegovina with a focus on strengthening higher, general, vocational and adult education. However, several surveys – as well as the latest report of the European Commission – point to a large disparity between the knowledge and skills of jobseekers coming out of the education system, and the needs of the labour market.

Within the “Education for Employment” project launched today, the European Union is providing €2.6 million to assist BiH authorities in improving capacity and structures for planning the educational process and the quality of educational outcomes. The project will address existing shortcomings, given the mismatch between education and training systems and the needs of the labour market. The project will provide this support through the development of modern lifelong career guidance services, as well as better higher education and vocational education and training.

“On behalf of the European Union, I am very glad to kick off this project which will address very relevant areas of education in BiH, in particular the reform of teacher training and the development of a model for monitoring of progress of reform processes based on external assessments of education systems through international tests of students such as PISA, PIRLS, and TIMMS,” said Gianluca Vannini, Head of the Operations Section for Social Development, Civil Society and Cross-Border Cooperation in the EU Delegation to BiH.

The “Education for Employment” project will help strengthen staff capacity in the Ministry of Education, agencies, pedagogical institutes and schools so they will be able to make regular assessments of the situation in the education sector and use the results of this assessment for research and the planning of educational policies. This will further enable experts in the education sector to analyse and transform the results of external testing of students conducted both nationally and internationally.

In addition, the project will address the further development of entrepreneurial competencies in Bosnia and Herzegovina, initiating a policy discussion, as well as offering pilot activities in the field of digital competencies. It will last for 30 months and is extremely important both for strengthening the education system and for economic development in Bosnia and Herzegovina.