5th meeting of the Community of Practice (CoP)

On October 12th, 2025, we held the fifth meeting of the Community of Practice (CoP) on Education Policy Impact Evaluation.

The meeting focused on Vocational Education and Training (VET) — a key priority under the European Union of Skills and a critical tool for addressing labour market needs, supporting economic transitions, and improving lifelong learning opportunities. The sessions explored how rigorous impact evaluation methods can be used to assess the effectiveness of VET policies and reforms and provide meaningful insights on what works and does not work.

It is difficult to summarise the meeting, since we had so many fruitful and insightful discussions among the 23 participants representing 13 Member States during our sessions, which also included presentations of case studies, a keynote speech, and a group discussion.

Presentations from the Learning Lab team illustrated how institutional features such as eligibility rules and regional differences can support credible causal analysis of VET policies, drawing on evidence from Germany and Latvia. The German case showed that training vouchers for women returning to work substantially improved earnings recovery, job quality, and employment stability, especially for low-skilled participants. The Latvian Youth Guarantee training programme showed modest but statistically inconclusive effects, underscoring the importance of careful programme design and methodological rigour. 
The keynote intervention by Professor Federica Origo highlighted broader lessons from Italian VET reforms, showing that extending vocational tracks eased the school-to-work transition for vulnerable groups and that tertiary VET diplomas yield sizeable gains in employment and earnings when course quality is high. The discussion also stressed the challenges of constructing appropriate comparison groups and the value of close cooperation between researchers and public administrations.

Further presentations from our colleagues from Bulgaria, Slovakia and Italy showcased fantastic examples of ongoing efforts to advance data-driven evaluation practices. Bulgaria emphasised the need for stronger administrative data infrastructures and early data-sharing agreements to support reliable assessments, a problem many countries face. Slovakia’s analysis pointed to fragmentation in its VET system but interestingly showed clear employment and earnings advantages for graduates of dual education pathways. Italy reported on the groundbreaking development of a self-evaluation framework enabling VET centres to assess their own performance, strengthen data literacy, and identify areas for improvement, while calling for a national VET registry.

In the closing group discussion, we jointly reflected on strategies for improving how evaluation results can more effectively inform policy. Key solutions and positive experiences touched on the use of steering groups to oversee evaluations, the production of accessible summaries and infographics for policymakers, and greater investment in policymakers’ capacity to interpret evidence, alongside clearer communication of results by researchers.

If you want to know more, check the flash report and all presentations in our Teams channel.

Stay tuned for the next meeting of the CoP in spring!