Vocational education and training (VET) has been an essential part of EU policy since the very establishment of the European Community. VET has a key economic function in up-skilling and integrating young people into the labour market and in providing high quality technical skills. It is also a crucial element of the EU Lisbon Strategy, which aims at transforming Europe into the world’s most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based society. A strategic framework for European cooperation in education and training is in place and will be the principle European guideline until 2020. Competitiveness is a major Lisbon goal and includes economic and employment performance, social cohesion and sustainable economic growth. Competitiveness‘ analyses the facts and policies that shape the ability of a nation to create and maintain an environment that sustains more value creation for its enterprises and more prosperity for its people. EU member and candidate countries shape its own VET system in line with competitiveness and adoptable workforce in to labour market.

IceVET project aims to generate strong consciousness about innovation and competitiveness and their impacts to employability and global market conditions among all VET actors in partner's regions beside participant instituions. In order to realize this objective IceVET project has many innovative and unique activities which will be carried out in project duration such as investigation best practices on the issues innovation and competitiveness in VET systems in the world, constitition draft curriciulum for Innovation training in VET schools, determining innovation and competitiveness perceptions of VET students, teachers, managers and employers in target regions and sharing experiences and valuable datas obtained through project activities with scientific world via a scientific paper. Additionally preparing a policy paper for innovation and competitiveness approaces for EU 2020 is another strong objetive of IceVET project. All objectives are feasible and sustainable essence. IceVET objetives support EU 2020 targets directly by means of common approach to innovation and competitiveness perceptions.

6 partners from 5 countries have been participated in IceVET project. Common background and similar working fields make collaboration easier among partner institutions/organizations. Partnership structure contains public research institution, public local authority on educational issues, public VET school, public VET center, an enterprise to make connections with labour market and an NGO that has directly relevance to the issue we focused. All parties are keen on to share their experiences and take a part in this proposal.

IceVET project covers some activities in order to reach its objectives:

Quality and validity of project outputs are at high level and sustainable.

There are many strong and unique activities in IceVET project and they needs strong collaboration and hardwork to realize on time. Project team of IceVET knows and believes partners' competences and qualifications to undertake important responsiblities in project period. Beside, each of tasks have been distributed according to the partners' institutional characters and key staff's qualifications. The main methodologies of the IceVET project are active collaboration, qualified observation, effective financial approach and impartial administration. Institutions/organizations have sufficient experience in order to apply these methodologies in IceVET project factual.

Constitution awareness on the issues "innovation and competitiveness" in VET systems in target regions, contribution EU 2020 targets through research studies, composing draft curriculum for "innovation training" in VET scools, identification of innovation and competitiveness perceptions of VET students, teachers, manager and local employers and sharing experiences obtained through project activities in scientific fields via scientific paper are aimed in IceVET project. Project results and outputs support innovation and competitiveness policy of EU.