What Can We Expect from VET in 2030–2035?

Out now is the conference volume “Shaping VET for Tomorrow” produced by the National VET Team and published by Tempus Public Foundation (Budapest) in 2025. The publication synthesizes the work from the international conference held in Budapest on 6 December 2024, with participants from 13 countries.

What interested me is that the volume shows how mobility drives school innovation, quality assurance, participation in democratic life, and the green transition. And – very important – it provides actionable models VET institutions can adopt to plan, implement, validate, and scale higher-quality Erasmus+ projects.

What will shape VET in the next decade

VET in Europe enters a policy-heavy decade driven by the European Education Area (EEA), a reinforced Erasmus+ and a new Union of Skills agenda. Expect three big levers:

1) A tighter European Education Area

Erasmus+ remains the main instrument to deliver EEA goals: better access to quality learning, stronger teacher development, digital and green education, and a shared European identity. Leaders endorsed the EEA at the 2017 Gothenburg Social Summit; and by 2023 the mid-term review guided an evaluation due in 2025.

Headline outcomes already cited in the volume include:

• ~95% of children in early childhood education from age 4
• >40% of young adults with higher-ed qualifications
• ~90% completing upper-secondary or training
• 80% of recent Erasmus+ graduates employed within 3 months

2) Europe on the Move, mobility for all

The May 2024 Council Recommendation targets obstacles to learning mobility – language, age, recognition, finance – and calls on Member States to make mobility a standard option in VET. Expect systemic pathways, stronger language learning, and easier recognition of outcomes.

3) A Union of Skills and a VET strategy

In March 2025, the Commission proposed a Union of skills to boost adult learning, retention, and recognition. The political guidelines announce a European Strategy for VET to elevate secondary VET and close labor gaps, with Roxana Mînzatu tasked as EVP for Social Rights and Skills.

Bigger budgets, bigger results

The bigger budget has led to a much wider reach. To give you an idea of the size of the funds and the effect it has on the VET macro-cosmos:

• Erasmus+ allocates a whopping €26+ billion in 2021–2027, nearly double the previous period.
• VET mobility (KA1) funding rose from €301m (2021) to €600m (2024).
• VET organisations/authorities in KA1 grew from ~9,600 (2021) to ~23,150 (2024);
• VET accreditations increased from 3,990 to 5,700.
• By 2024, ~698,000 VET staff and learners had taken part.
• In KA2, VET projects climbed from 994 (2021) to 2,640 (2024).
• Participating VET organizations rose from >3,600 to >7,300.

VET data from within Erasmus+ shows that:

• 71% of the activity is KA1 related.
• 29% is KA2 related.
• €723m was contracted.
• There were more than 241,000 participants, of whom 85% are learners/apprentices and 17% are learners with fewer opportunities.
• 98% of funds are managed by National Agencies.

The multi-year VET accreditations created stable pipelines for mobility, including consortia led by local or regional coordination bodies which strengthened the quality and spread access.

What mobility actually changes in learners

A six-country study (Poland, Hungary, Czechia, Latvia, Slovenia, Romania) reviewed 909 VET-school survey responses and 88 interviews (2014–2020 mobilities). I’ll outline the key impacts below and between brackets you will get the mean scores, on a 1–5 scale:

• Working skills lead (4.37). Learners improve team-working, workplace awareness, and readiness for international contexts.
• Intercultural competences (4.33) and transversal competences (4.27) follow, covering tolerance, cultural awareness, communication, and independent learning.
• Learning motivation rises (4.24). Foreign-language competencies improve (4.18).
• Relationships within school increase the least (3.97).
• ICT skills score lowest (3.68).

There was clearly a country difference. The highest perceived impact on working skills and motivation appears in Romania and Poland, with Slovenia close; while broader variance and lower medians show in Czechia, Hungary, and Latvia.

There are a few mechanisms that make short mobilities transformative:

• Selection models: Move from picking only top achievers to an inclusive intake that also weighs socio-economic background. Prepare every learner before departure: write a CV in English, run a short interview, and refresh language skills. This prep builds confidence, sets goals, and gives learners ownership of the experience.
• Situated learning: Place learners in real workplaces with clear tasks, a mentor, and real responsibility. They test career choices, many confirm their path, some pivot with better insight. Back at school, returnees share methods and raise expectations, creating a ripple effect across peers and teachers.

Greening VET without greenwashing

Authors from Austria, Croatia, Estonia, Lithuania stress embedding green skills through real projects albeit whilst avoiding greenwashing. They advocate blended mobility, and tech that reduces travel footprint while preserving cultural immersion.

They also outline AI roles in scheduling, routing, measurement, and curriculum mapping for sustainability outcomes. But at the same time they also caution on AI’s energy cost and urge balanced actions, and this both individually and systemically. Estonia and Lithuania do share national green priorities and peer-learning models to scale practice.

What does this means for us teachers? As teachers we need to build occupation-specific green skill sets. For example: energy diagnostics for building trades, circularity audits in hospitality, low-impact agronomy in food systems. These should be embedded in assessment and work-based learning logs. Treat them as core performance outcomes.

Quality you can prove

The EQAVET chapter in the report presents four complementary views from 4 countries:

• Hungary: an EQAVET-based institutional quality system that ties mobility planning, contracts, outcome definition, validation, and partner feedback into one loop.
• Germany: a dual-VET quality assurance framework with eleven pillars for learning mobility, aligning enterprise training with national QA.
• Estonia: transnational peer reviews to benchmark mobility quality.
• Bulgaria: structured QA in mobility with clear success factors from planning to validation.

The case of Germany is interesting as they provided eleven pillars in their dual-VET quality assurance framework. These pillars set minimum standards negotiated with social partners and monitored by chambers, so enterprise training aligns with national QA and EQAVET-style review. That makes cross-border placements easier to plan, document, and validate. The 11 pillars are:

1. Social-partner governance. State, employers, and employees co-shape the dual system.
2. Evidence-based planning. VET planning rests on indicator-driven reporting.
3. Continuous improvement. Modernization, research, development, and pilot projects feed upgrades.
4. Occupation principle. Training regulations are structured around recognized occupations.
5. State-recognized trades. Occupations stay practice-oriented and are regularly updated.
6. Career guidance. Systematic guidance supports young people choosing training paths.
7. Qualified trainers. Trainers meet personal and professional qualification standards.
8. Fit-for-purpose venues. Workshops and schools are properly equipped, enabling mobility-ready
9. Clear contracts. Training contracts codify rights and obligations.
10. Valid assessment. Examination boards certify occupational proficiency using recognized procedures.
11. Company–school cooperation. Firms and vocational schools jointly deliver training.

In short, mobility should be treated as curriculum. Therefor we should lock learning outcomes to EQF levels, collect evidence, validate with Europass, and run post-mobility impact loops at learner, provider, and regional levels.

Work-based learning (WBL) is still the growth engine

Across the EU, 60.1% of recent VET graduates (20–34, ISCED 3–4) gained work experience as part of their studies, and these placements are usually long and paid. That’s the strongest lever for job-readiness in initial VET.

Latvia and Hungary report near-universal WBL in IVET; Poland and Romania lag at 14% and 11% in 2022, though Romania rose from 3% in 2015. Czechia/Slovenia data are incomplete for the latest years. The policy line after 2020 is rather clear: strengthen WBL to smooth the school-to-work transition and match skills to demand.

As far as employment rates for recent IVET graduates, it has hit 85% in Czechia, 84% in Hungary, 83% in Latvia, with Poland and Romania trending upward. WBL is the common denominator behind these results.

Most Erasmus+ IVET mobilities last 2–3 weeks in real companies across sectors like tourism, gastronomy, IT, agriculture, healthcare, beauty, and arts. This way learners meet modern workflows and tools. 2015–2019 saw Poland reach 116,728 mobilities, followed by Romania with 21,846, Czechia with 17,561, Slovenia with 7,988, and Latvia with 3,009. Important detail, the destinations skew to Southern Europe and Germany and that is due to strong vocational ecosystems.

What does WBL change in learners? International placements sharpen job-specific and transversal skills and often confirm or reset career choices. After mobility, schools report better attendance, upgraded performance, and a transfer effect as returnees raise peer expectations and methods. Add to this that Europass records and foreign placements on a CV lift competitiveness at hiring.

Seven bets for VET’s future

The report also lays out seven concrete moves that will form future-ready VET systems. Each one is actionable, measurable, and tied to outcomes. You can use these moves to design programs that boost job-readiness, trackable green impact, and durable international mobility.

1. WBL-first design. Map every qualification to real tasks, with mobility as the accelerator. Use accreditations and consortia to scale access year-on-year.
2. Green skills as hard skills. Write precise, occupation-level green outcomes and test them in the workplace. Track emission reductions and resource efficiency as learner KPIs.
3. AI as infrastructure. Use AI to optimize mobility logistics, personalize language prep, and tag evidence to outcomes; publish energy metrics to stay honest.
4. Language + intercultural as employability. Keep language learning embedded in projects, not in isolation; the data show strong gains here and in international teamwork.
5. EQAVET everywhere. Standardize planning → delivery → validation → impact review; invite peer reviewers across borders.
6. Democratic participation. Use SALTO resources and ambassador schemes (e.g., EuroApprentices) to tie VET to civic life and rights at work.
7. Union of skills alignment. Prepare for the 2028–2034 program by hard-wiring adult learning, recognition and micro-credentials into provider strategy.

VET’s future in Europe is bigger, greener, and more verifiable

VET’s next chapter expands access, puts green skills at the core, and makes outcomes easier to verify. Funding and policy are in place. Mobility builds job-ready skills, language, and motivation. EQAVET turns those gains into clear evidence.

For teachers the report offers a very practical approach:

1. Count each mobility as assessed learning.
2. Include occupation-specific green tasks in grading rubrics.
3. Collect evidence consistently: learning logs, mentor checklists, Europass.
4. Share simple cohort dashboards to show progress.
5. Link projects to civic life and workplace rights.
6. Use peer review and external exam boards where available to keep quality consistent.

If you follow these steps, you’ll quickly see that they make improvement a steady routine.

FAQ on VET in 2030–2035

How does the European Education Area affect VET providers?

EEA sets shared goals (quality, equity, teacher development, digital and green education) and tracks progress, e.g., upper-secondary completion and Erasmus+ graduate employment. It frames why Erasmus+ funds and priorities land in your classrooms.

How big is Erasmus+ VET now, and is it growing?

KA1 VET budget rose from €301m (2021) to €600m (2024); KA2 VET projects from 994 (2021) to 2,640 (2024). KA1 VET accreditations reached ~5,700 and ~698,000 VET staff/learners took part by 2024.

What is the “12% VET mobility target by 2030”?

The Council Recommendation “Europe on the Move” raises the EU-level target for VET learner mobility abroad to 12% by 2030 (up from the earlier 8% by 2025). Use this as a teacher when arguing for mobility as a mainstream option.

What barriers to Erasmus+ VET mobility and what’s recommended?

Barriers include language, age, recognition, emotional distress, and finance. Recommendations: systemic mobility pathways, stronger language learning, better recognition, and inclusive access.

What evidence shows Erasmus+ VET mobility improves student outcomes?

A multi-country study (n=909 surveys; 88 interviews) reports the strongest perceived gains in working skills (mean 4.37/5), intercultural competences (4.33), transversal competences (4.27), motivation (4.24), and foreign-language skills (4.18). ICT skills scored lowest (3.68).

Which countries show the highest employment rates for recent IVET graduates?

Czechia 85%, Hungary 84%, Latvia 83%, with Poland and Romania improving. Ideal for a “VET outcomes” data box.

How common is work-based learning (WBL) in IVET?

By 2022, Latvia and Hungary reported near-universal WBL; Poland 14%; Romania 11% (up from 3% in 2015). The report ties WBL to smoother school-to-work transitions.

What are typical Erasmus+ IVET mobility durations and sectors?

Most student mobilities last 2–3 weeks in real companies across tourism, gastronomy, IT, agriculture, healthcare, hair/beauty, and arts education. Poland logged 116,728 mobilities in 2015–2019, the largest sender in the sample.

How should I integrate green skills in vocational education?

Treat green skills as assessed outcomes and align them with workplace tasks (e.g., diagnostics, circularity checks). The green transition chapter stresses curriculum integration, blended mobility, and transparent trade-offs.

What is EQAVET and why does it matter for mobility quality?

EQAVET is a European quality framework. The report shows: a national EQAVET-based system (Hungary), an eleven-pillar dual-VET QA framework (Germany), transnational peer reviews (Estonia), and project-level quality standards so mobility becomes auditable learning.

How do “Participation in Democratic Life” priorities link to VET?

National Agencies run a Participation Network; the VET sector’s budget line for participation projects (e.g., civic engagement tasks in KA1/KA2) is documented, with sector breakdowns.

What does the “Union of Skills” mean for VET from 2028–2034?

The Commission proposes an overarching skills strategy, including a European Strategy for VET to raise the share of secondary VET graduates – setting the scene for the next Erasmus+ cycle (2028–2034) with calls for stability and continuity.

---

---