Centres of Vocational Excellence

Scope:

CENTRES OF VOCATIONAL EXCELLENCE

Centres of Vocational Excellence (CoVE) aim to be a driving force for reforms in the Vocational Education Training (VET) sector, ensuring high quality skills and competences that lead to quality employment and career-long opportunities, meeting the needs of an innovative, inclusive and sustainable economy and contributing to addressing challenges in key economic sectors.

The main objective is the establishment of transnational collaborative networks that bring together local and regional VET stakeholders (VET institutions, companies, social partners, authorities, higher education institutions, research institutes, etc.) in strong and broad partnerships, thereby creating comprehensive skills ecosystems for innovation, regional development, and social inclusion.

The initiative is based on a bottom-up approach to vocational excellence, enabling VET institutions to rapidly adapt skills provisions to evolving economic and social needs in their context as identified by the project partners. It is complementary to and works in synergy with other Pact for Skills initiatives.

Implementing vocational excellence approaches features prominently in the overall EU policy for skills and VET put forward in the Union of Skills, the European Education Area, the 2020 Council Recommendation on VET, as well as the Osnabrück Declaration and its successor, the Herning Declaration. The CoVE initiative is firmly anchored in the European Pillar of Social Rights, the European Green Deal, the new Digital Strategy, and supports the Industrial and SME Strategies, the Council Recommendation ‘Europe on the Move’ – learning mobility opportunities for everyone, the STEM Education Strategic Plan, and the Clean Industrial Deal.

The Union of Skills is an investment in people for a competitive European Union, which needs skilled people to respond to new challenges and stay competitive. It is an initiative that aims to improve the quality of education, training, and lifelong learning and the Centres of Vocational Excellence can contribute to the Union of Skills and the upcoming VET strategy, also through public-private partnerships, expand the use of micro-credentials, etc.

Further, this initiative introduces a European dimension to vocational excellence by supporting the implementation of EU VET policy and actions agreed with Member States, social partners and VET providers.

OBJECTIVES OF THE ACTION

The main objective of the CoVE initiative is the establishment and development of transnational collaborative networks that bring together local and regional VET stakeholders (VET institutions, companies and other employers, social partners, authorities, higher education institutions, research institutes, etc.) in strong and broad public-private partnerships, thereby creating comprehensive skills ecosystems for innovation, regional development, and social inclusion and supporting European competitiveness.

The Centres of Vocational Excellence aim at achieving the following objectives:

• to ensure high quality skills through flexible and learner-centred VET provisions that lead to quality employment and career-long opportunities, swiftly responding to the needs of an innovative, inclusive, competitive and sustainable economy as well as to societal needs;
• to support and act as drivers for local and regional development, innovation and social inclusion;
• to contribute to upward convergence on VET excellence, to increase the quality of VET at system level in more and more countries;
• to ensure that outputs and results are taken into use and have impact beyond the project partner organisations and beyond the project period.

SCOPE OF THE ACTION

The CoVEs are expected to develop innovative VET practices, e.g. for use of digital technologies, including AI, contribute to VET attractiveness and inclusion as well as applied research and innovation, facilitate mobility and apprenticeships and professional development of teachers and trainers, work together on joint VET provisions incl. micro-credentials, etc.

The Centres of Vocational Excellence operate at two levels:

1. At national level, involving a wide range of local stakeholders creating skills ecosystems for local innovation, regional development, and social inclusion, while working with CoVEs in other countries through international collaborative networks.

2. At transnational level, bringing together CoVEs that share a common interest in:

▪ specific sectors;

▪ innovative approaches to tackle economic and societal challenges (e.g. climate change, digitalisation, artificial intelligence, sustainable development goals [See Berlin Declaration on Education for SDG ], integration of migrants and disadvantaged groups, upskilling people with low qualification levels, etc.), or

▪ innovative approaches to increase the outreach, quality and effectiveness of existing CoVEs.

For more information, see the Erasmus + Programme Guide 2026.