POPULARIZATION OF VOCATIONAL EDUCATION AND TRAINING AMONG YOUNG PEOPLE: THE EUROPEAN PRACTICES AND STEPS FOR ITS IMPROVEMENT IN UKRAINE

Because of the full-scale invasion of the russian federation, Ukraine has suffered and will suffer significant damage to infrastructure, the rehabilitation of which will require highly qualified personnel, especially skilled workers. Despite the high demand in the labor market for skilled workers in Ukraine, only 15% of youth among the 9th-grade graduates of general secondary education institutions choose vocational education and training (VET) institutions. Such a discouraging trend is explained by the low popularization of VET among the youth of Ukraine, caused by the imperfect system of vocational guidance and professional counselling of student youth. The article is aimed at studying the best practices of EU countries on the popularization of VET among young people and describing steps to increase it in Ukraine. In our view, the popularization of VET is an opportunity to encourage young people and adults to choose VET by offering them high-quality qualifications that open up career prospects and a decent salary. The best practices in countries such as Serbia, Croatia, the Czech Republic and Slovenia, where the proportion of high school students preferring VET is highest, shows that effective career guidance and counselling systems exist in these countries, using an individual approach to each individual. Since 2021, the government of Ukraine launched a large-scale campaign to popularize VET, aimed at increasing the attractiveness of VET and changing the approach to career guidance among schoolchildren, as a result of which in 2021 compared to the previous year, the number of students enrolled in VET has increased. Also, a positive trend is this year's increase in the number of regional applications for the training of workers and specialists in regions remote from the combat zone. However, the low popularization of VET among young people remains a challenge. The main ways to address this problem are the introduction of effective career guidance and counselling system; the establishment of regional career guidance centres; the introduction of a career counsellor in VET institutions; maximum involvement of business in the popularization of labor professions, etc. During the period of martial law in Ukraine, the VET will play a strategic role in providing our country with labor force.