IOE to Partner with WorldSkills Russia
On August 8–12, the city of Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk hosted this year’s Finals of the WorldSkills Russia national competition of young professionals. As part of the event, a Memorandum of Cooperation was signed between the HSE Institute of Education and WorldSkills Russia, marking an important new alliance for further advancing the national system of vocational education & training (VET).
Under the agreement, the parties will join forces in deploying novelty curriculum and instructional approaches, based on monitoring and adopting global best practices in the field, to facilitate ongoing improvements in how vocational education is delivered and to ensure young professionals are equipped with high-quality, in-demand competencies and skills that best dovetail with what national and global labor markets require.
The cooperation framework envisages a high-scope agenda of joint R&D where IOE will act as a provider of multifaceted expertise in VET development. In particular, IOE’s research centers and expert teams will focus on such areas as: monitoring and assessing regional VET systems and policy contexts; analyzing and drafting enhancements for the existing VET curricula; supporting student career guidance programs; designing upskilling courses for vocational instructors; etc. In addition, the new alliance emphasizes the objectives of designing cutting-edge testing kits to more representatively evaluate students’ specialist competencies and soft skills.
“IOE’s innovative Master’s program in Applied Psychometrics, which welcomed its first class four years ago, has over the time evolved to enter top 100 best offerings in the world. I’m pretty confident our partnership with WorldSkills Russia will unlock opportunities for further pushing the frontiers of this realm by jointly creating brand-new, globally competitive solutions,” IOE Head, Isak Froumin noted.
“Cooperation with IOE heralds an important point for WorldSkills placing us uniquely to spark a new momentum for vocational training. I believe by joining our efforts we will able to devise solutions conducive to more objective evaluations of both VET programs and students’ learning outcomes. Also, it is crucial to ensure Russia’s VET landscape develops under streamlined, best-practice organizational principles to be able to operate as a well-coordinated training system, including regional- and federal-level VET hubs. In delivering on these objectives, we will rely on the huge expertise that HSE and IOE have accumulated,” WorldSkills Russia Director, Robert Urazov commented.