New technologies can be purchased, training programmes can be designed and curricula can be updated. But none of these, on their own, creates a sustainable skills ecosystem.
What makes the difference is the ability of education providers, companies, public authorities, research organisations and other regional actors to work together over the long term. This is why public-private partnerships are becoming increasingly important for the future of vocational education and training in Europe.
Why partnerships matter
The idea behind Centres of Vocational Excellence goes beyond developing excellent individual VET institutions. It is about creating skills ecosystems in which education, industry, research and public institutions work together and respond to economic and technological change.
For companies, this can mean better access to people with the right skills and a more direct role in shaping future training. For VET providers, it means closer contact with technological developments, access to expertise and equipment, and better opportunities for work-based learning. Public authorities and regional organisations, meanwhile, have an interest in ensuring that these partnerships contribute to employment, innovation and regional competitiveness.
The challenge is that cooperation does not automatically become a sustainable partnership.
Across Europe, there are many good examples of companies working with schools, universities cooperating with industry or public institutions supporting training initiatives. But such relationships can remain dependent on individual projects, particular funding programmes or even personal contacts.
The real challenge is to make this cooperation part of a system.
Five ecosystems, five different starting points
This question is particularly relevant for WELDNET, which brings together skills ecosystems from Austria, Greece, Romania, Serbia and Spain.
The five ecosystems share common ambitions, but their starting points differ. Cooperation between education and industry, governance arrangements, stakeholder participation, available resources and approaches to financing and sustainability are not the same across the participating regions.
Some already have strong and relatively institutionalised cooperation mechanisms. Others rely more on project-based partnerships and are still developing structures that can bring education, companies and public actors together on a more permanent basis.
For WELDNET, these differences are useful. They allow the partners to compare different experiences, see which approaches may be transferable and, equally importantly, recognise what needs to remain specific to each regional context.
There is therefore no reason to expect a single partnership model to work equally well everywhere. What can be shared is a common methodology that regions can adapt to their own circumstances.
From “Who pays?” to “What can we contribute together?”
Within WELDNET, partners are working together to develop a Public-Private Partnership & Funding Pool Tool to support regional ecosystems in moving from individual cooperation towards more structured and sustainable partnerships.
The process begins with understanding the ecosystem: identifying the relevant actors, looking at how they already cooperate, recognising gaps and exploring where stronger partnerships could create value. From there, attention turns to common objectives, stakeholder responsibilities, governance and, inevitably, one of the most difficult issues for any partnership – resources and long-term financing.
This is where the funding pool concept becomes particularly relevant.
When a new training initiative is discussed, the first question is often: “Where can we find the money?” But financial support is only part of what an ecosystem can mobilise.
A company may provide access to specialised machinery. An engineer may spend time mentoring students or training teachers. A VET school may make its workshop available, while a university may contribute laboratory facilities or specialist expertise. Public authorities can support coordination or investment, and European and national programmes can finance activities that require additional resources.
These contributions have value even when no money changes hands.
Looking at resources in this way changes the question. Instead of asking only “Who will fund this?”, partners can ask:
“What can we achieve by combining the resources already available across the ecosystem?”
That is the basic idea behind the funding pool approach.
More than funding: investing in the capacity to train
This becomes especially relevant in advanced manufacturing.
WELDNET focuses on skills related to Circular Material Welding and Predictive Maintenance Systems in the context of sustainable and resilient automotive and advanced manufacturing. In these fields, training cannot develop separately from technology.
Modern vocational training requires access to specialised equipment, digital systems, laboratories and real industrial environments. Teachers and trainers also need regular contact with the technological developments taking place inside companies.
A well-functioning partnership can make these resources more accessible and create opportunities for shared training infrastructure, work-based learning, teacher and trainer upskilling, curriculum development, access to industrial expertise and joint investment in new technologies.
Making cooperation less dependent on individuals
There is another important issue that is sometimes overlooked.
Successful cooperation often begins because particular people make it happen: an engaged company manager, a proactive school director, an expert from a public institution or a small group of organisations working together through a European project.
That is valuable, but it can also make cooperation fragile. People change jobs, institutional priorities shift and projects eventually end.
The challenge for a developing skills ecosystem is therefore to gradually turn these relationships into more stable structures – with clearer responsibilities, shared resources, appropriate governance and a broader funding base. In this way, activities are more likely to continue even when individual people, projects or funding sources change.
This is why governance, funding diversification and sustainability matter just as much as individual training activities.
Learning from differences
WELDNET is not trying to create an identical partnership structure in five countries.
Instead, the experience of Austria, Greece, Romania, Serbia and Spain provides an opportunity to see how a common approach works under different regional conditions.
Each ecosystem ultimately needs to answer the same practical questions: Who needs to cooperate? Around which priorities? What can each stakeholder realistically contribute? How should decisions be made? Which resources can be shared or combined? And how can cooperation continue after individual projects and funding cycles end?
The answers will not necessarily be the same in all five regions – and they do not need to be.
What matters is building the capacity of each ecosystem to identify its needs, bring the right actors together, mobilise available resources and adapt as technologies and labour-market requirements evolve.
In the end, vocational excellence depends on more than the quality of a school, a training programme or a piece of equipment. It depends on whether the wider ecosystem around them can continue to cooperate, invest, learn and adapt over time.
