The Minister of Education, Religious Affairs and Sports Kyriakos Pierrakakis visited Austria.
In a post on social media, Mr. Pierrakakis makes extensive reference to the meetings he had with Austrian officials on issues of his ministry, including the new law on non-state, non-profit branches of foreign universities, but also vocational education.
In detail, the Minister of Education states:
“In Austria we had particularly productive meetings on issues within the competence of the Ministry of Education, Religious Affairs and Sports.
We exchanged good practices with members of the Federal Government and officials of the State of Styria, focusing on higher and vocational education and training.
With my federal and local counterparts Martin Polaschek and Werner Amon we discussed in detail about our education systems and the challenges they face. Greece and Austria will develop closer and mutually beneficial cooperation on education issues.
In this context, we visited a vocational training facility in Graz, where the apprenticeship programme for the use of technologies in the production process was presented.
Austria is one of the examples we are studying for Vocational Education & Training especially with regard to the link to the local labour market and its needs.
In a meeting at the Federal Ministry of Education we also presented to Rectors and Ministry officials the recent law on higher education, which encourages the cooperation of Greek universities with prestigious foreign institutions and provides for the possibility of establishing branches of foreign universities in our country.
Finally, we discussed with His Eminence Metropolitan Arsenios of Austria, Most Reverend and Exarch of Hungary and Meso-Europe, the operation of the Hellenic National School of Vienna and the needs of our fellow citizens in Austria, especially our teachers who serve there.”
