Skills for Industry: Katapult and Make IT Work as best practice

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The Executive Agency for Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (EASME) issued a report to investigate public policies and funding programmes for high-tech skills development, to identify good practices and to make concrete recommendations for scaling up best practices and re-focusing funding programmes and incentives in Europe.

"The analysis of 70 of the most promising high-tech skills initiatives out of 270 identified in ten European countries revealed that there are very promising and successful examples showing how to make Universities (e.g. Expertkompetens in Sweden) and VET institutions (e.g. Katapult in the Netherlands) efficient re- and up-skilling players. At the same time, our analysis confirmed that the funding landscape is still very fragmented throughout Europe, leading to significant inefficiencies and duplication of effort. Long-term sustainability of funded projects is very often lacking." (P 10)

A very few stars could be identified, of which Katapult and Make IT Work - that is part of the Katapult network (and was even the winner of the award for best public-private partnership in 2018). 

The report argued: "For example, Katapult in the Netherlands was set up as a cooperation initiative of formerly disconnected actors under a shared goal and innovation ambition pushed by a small team of experts. The additional costs for this team are small, but through this cooperation Katapult managed to leverage large sums coming from all the actors involved and scale up its operation nationwide, with around 150 training centres throughout the Netherlands in less than ten years. Learner voucher schemes - which exist in Germany, France and elsewhere - appear worthwhile and a functioning instrument addressed to individuals and paid for by governments. The investment level per individual is low but the impact can be large. In order to promote the use of this instrument among a larger number of beneficiaries, further awareness raising and promotion efforts are needed. It should help persuade employees that further training is necessary." (P 15)

 

See full report here or download here.

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