Recommendation concerning Tecnical and Vocational Education - United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)

Recommendation Concerning Technical and Vocational Education (revised), 2001, Ch. II (7)

II. Technical and vocational education in relation to the educational process: objectives

7. Technical and vocational education should begin with a broad base which facilitates horizontal and vertical articulation within the education system and between school and the world of work, thus contributing to the elimination of all forms of discrimination, and should be designed so that it:

1. is an integral part of everyone's basic general education in the form of initiation to technology, the world of work, and human values and standards for responsible citizenship;
2. may be freely and positively chosen as the means by which people develop talents, interests and skills leading to an occupation in various sectors or to further education;
3. allows access to other aspects and areas of education at all levels, including institutions of higher learning, by being grounded in a solid general education and, as a result of the integration mentioned in paragraph 6(a), containing a general education component through all stages of specialization;
4. allows transfers from one field to another within technical and vocational education;
5. is readily available to all and for all appropriate types of specialization, within and outside formal education systems, and in conjunction or in parallel with training in order to permit educational, career and job mobility at the minimum age at which the general basic education is considered to have been acquired, according to the education system in force in each country;
6. is available on the above terms and on a basis of equality to women as well as men, and where the learning and working environment is made suitable for the participation of girls and women by removing overt and covert bias and discrimination and seeking strategies for motivating girls and women to take an interest in vocational and technical education;
7. is available to people with disabilities and to socially and economically disadvantaged groups such as immigrants, refugees, minorities (including indigenous peoples), demobilized soldiers in post-conflict situations, and underprivileged and marginalized youth in special forms adapted to their needs in order to integrate them more easily into society.