Re-engineering education systems: CEMETS Summer Institutes 2024
Many education systems struggle to equip students with the necessary skills for employment. This year, CEMETS hosted our education system reform lab twice, welcoming reform leaders from the United States, Serbia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Uzbekistan, Nepal, and South Africa.
By Marit van Dekken
The CEMETS Summer Institute 2024 featured an online course followed by two live institute weeks in Zurich. Teams from around the world joined for case workshops, lectures, keynotes, and site visits. Participants included teams from US states such as Washington, Indiana, Colorado, Alabama, New York City, and a national US team from Empower Schools, as well as teams from Serbia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Uzbekistan, Nepal, and South Africa.
Education reforms are long-lasting and need capacity building. Our institute aims to support these reforms by offering scientific insights and supporting practical reform initiatives. As one participant noted, the institute was "very helpful in clarifying our priorities and developing a real and possible path".
“Education reforms are long-lasting and need capacity building”CEMETS Summer Institute
Discovering common ground: Case workshops at the CEMETS Summer Institute 2024
A highlight of the CEMETS Summer Institute was its case workshops. These sessions brought together all teams to share and discuss their reform challenges. This helped them to start defining goals to address key issues.
What happened next was eye-opening. Teams from all over the world realized they face similar problems. "I realized no matter from where we are, we are struggling with the same things, we are not the only ones," shared one participant. Another person remarked that "exposure to similar problems of practice from teams far away is encouraging and hearing their potential solutions was great."
Snapshots of CEMETS case workshops
Learning from experience: Site visits and keynotes
Lectures and workshops can only take you so far. Diving into real-world experience brings that knowledge to a whole new level. During site visits, our participants got to learn about apprenticeship in diverse fields: banking at external page CYP, IT at external page Swisscom, and woodworking and carpentry at the external page Holzbau Training Center.
We also had fantastic keynote speakers sharing their real-life experiences. Christoph Buser, Arthur Glaettli and Valentin Vogt shared their knowledge from the perspectives of the external page Baselland Economic Chamber and leading employers’ associations like the external page Swiss Employers Association and external page Swissmem. But that's not all! Aïda Biscevic gave us a thorough exploration of career guidance and counseling, while Noel Ginsburg shared his journey of building an external page apprenticeship model from the ground up.
One participant summed it up perfectly: the institute was "insightful, empowering and most importantly showing us something that has worked for Switzerland, theoretically and practically with all the stakeholders involved".
“Insightful, empowering and most importantly showing us something that has worked for Switzerland, theoretically and practically with all the stakeholders involved.”Participant CEMETS Summer Institute 2024
Changing what people do every day
A key topic during both weeks was the concept of social institutions: a common pattern of behavior that solves a problem. Reforming education systems is about changing what we do every day and reshaping our idea of success. In other words, it's about changing social institutions. Leadership is essential in driving this change, and our Summer Institute 2024 was dedicated to supporting this transformation.
- A Theoretical Framework and Methodological Approach for Assessing the Robustness of Social Institutions
- What makes Social Institutions of Vocational Education Systems robust?
- external page Apples inside orange peels: Exploring the use of functional equivalents for comparing curriculum processes across contexts
The CEMETS Summer Institute 2024 was a huge success. One participant remarked that it "helped me think very deeply about education systems, learn more about the challenges to reform within government systems, build relationships to do reform work together. It was an honor to be included in this experience. It has also given us a shared language."
We can't wait to see the results as teams head home to start their implementations. Stay tuned for the exciting changes ahead!
All participants during their site visit to CYP
Next year marks the 10-year anniversary of CEMETS. We plan to celebrate not only with a Summer Institute (June 15 - June 20, 2025) but also with a special Alumni Institute (June 29 - July 4, 2025)! Learn more on our institutes page.