Skills are a critical asset for individuals, businesses and societies.The importance of skills is even
more pronounced in a dynamic, globalized world. It is crucial to ensure that the skills developed are
relevant for the working world; that they are maintained and further improved during working life; and
that they are recognized and used by employers once people are in the labour market. Matching skills
and jobs has become a high-priority concern for the Albanian government. Many employers report
difficulties in finding suitably skilled workers. Although part of these difficulties are explained by factors
other than skills, such as uncompetitive wages, unattractive working conditions, poor recruitment
policies and/or mismatch between the location of skills and jobs, they are mostly related to skill gaps
and deficits in specific sectors, occupations and regions. Part of the observed skills mismatch is the
consequence of individuals’ initial educational and occupational choices, of education and training not
providing the skills required, and of typically imperfect information about labour marketopportunities.
Both the Albanian economy, the labour market and individuals’ aspirations have undergone
fundamental changes in the past years. The VET system has generally not been in a position to keep
pace with these developments. Good practice examples exist only in certain institutions and
programmes that have enjoyed sustained national, donor and/or private sector support. Numerous
analytical and strategic papers have concluded that more systemic efforts are needed at this point to
bring VET provision better in line with identified labour market demands. There is no point of offering
education and training for young people or adults, which is of little value for them in terms of becoming
skilled workers or progressing on in education to develop higher levels of skills. The ultimate aim of a
reformed VET system is to bring up skilled people who are sought after by employers or able to set up
their own businesses.
By now various skills needs analyses have been undertaken in Albania at national, sectoral and
regional levels. Drawing on these analyses and on additional consultations with sector and regional
representatives, the most important outcomes of the present report are:
1. Adraft national list of most demanded occupations(see Chapter VI) and
2. An overview over occupations/ qualifications needed in each Albanian region (see
Chapter V).
We have used mainly qualitative methodologies to compile these two major outcomes. They have
been adopted according to the time and resources available. The draft list of most demanded
occupationsintroduced can be used for further discussions and with a view to build an Albanian
Qualifications Framework. The latter is essential to organize the whole system of qualifications and
link them to identified skill needs, to ensure that qualification standards and certificates are uniformly
used across the country, that they are transparent and credible for both learners and employers, and
that they encourage learners to acquire higher levels of qualifications within a lifelong learning
perspective.
In addition, the overview over occupations/ qualifications needed in each Albanian region, alongside
the Final report of the GIZ-ETF 2014 Baseline Survey of Public VET Providers and other research, will
be useful for further discussions to inform the required optimization of the network and VET offers of
(public) VET providers in each Albanian region. A next step in this process would be to compile a
National VET Provider Development Plan, which in turn would serve as a basis for Strategic
Investment Plans, a National VET Staff Development Plan etc.