Developing Partnerships within PHE: The Romanian Ministry of Education Decision
The Ministry of education decision 4456 from July 8th 2015 approves the development of two institutions: 1) Local Committee for the Development of Social Partnership (LCDSP) at the level of counties and 2) Regional Consortium (RC) at the level of the development of the regions. LCDSP and RC have to improve the professional capabilities in order to correspond to the labour market needs. Moreover, they have to correlate the professional and technical educational offer with the needs of personal and professional development. In what concerns LCDSP, the main objectives of these institutions are to identify the social order for vocational and technical education and the priority areas for initial and continuing vocational training. Moreover, it should increase the capacity of vocational training to meet labour market requirements, local and regional development needs and individual beneficiaries’ needs. The overall objective of the RC is to contribute through social dialogue and public engagement of those involved in the harmonization of policies, strategies and concrete actions in the field of education and training with the complex, general or specific requirements of the economic, cultural, regional, county and local levels.
LCDSP is constituted and operates at the level of each county/ municipality of Bucharest, based on a voluntary cooperation agreement between the social partners and the legal representatives, for the development of the vocational and technical education. The RC is set up and operates at the level of each development region, on the basis of a voluntary cooperation agreement of the legal entities representative of the field of education, training and human resources development. Therefore, both organizations encompass a voluntary cooperation of different institutions, including the representatives of the education system and the employers, in order to increase the professional education adapted to labour market needs.
An example of RC is the Regional Consortium of Bucharest and Ilfov Development Region that consists of 21 institutions, and seven of them are all the public universities from Bucharest such as Politehnica University of Bucharest, the Technical University of Civil Engineering Bucharest, the National University of Political Studies and Public Administration. The representatives of the universities meet periodically with the Local Inspectorate for Education, the City Hall, the Agency for Employment, the General Union of the Industrial Employers, the Chamber for Commerce and Industry, and the National Center for the Development of Professional and Technical Education.