The European Training Foundation of the European Commission with the assistance of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Turkmenistan organized the first special seminar Reforms of Professional Education and Training in Action at the House of Europe in Ashgabat. The seminar presented by the EC experts in human potential development was aimed at exchanging experiences and the results of the reforms of professional education and training in the countries of Europe, Russia and Central Asia and specifying the priority trends in fulfilling the tasks to intensify the education reforms. The specialists of various sectoral ministries and departments of education, economy and development, oil and gas industry and mineral resources, textile industry, construction, etc. attended the seminar.

The successful stories of the reforms of professional education and training and labour market in the ETF partner countries were presented at the seminar.

On the basis of the current practice of the ETF partner countries the ETF experts had worked out and applied the methods of reform planning and implementation that was a focus of discussion at the seminar. The participants noted that to improve secondary, professional and higher education was impossible without designing and introducing the adequate quality standards of education that depended on the quality of teaching, the level of qualification of teachers, variety and flexibility of the educational programmes, etc.

The social and economic aspects of the education policy related to the labour market, public resources used to promote employment, economic growth and formation of the well-educated society were discussed at the seminar. In this context special attention was paid to retraining specialists in highly demanded professions.

During the visit to the Turkmen capital the ETF delegation will hold a series of the meetings and talks at the national ministries and departments to consider the perspective of EC-Turkmenistan co-operation in the sphere of education.