ASPECTS OF COOPERATION BETWEEN VOCATIONAL TRAINING PROVIDERS AND MICRO-ENTREPRENEURS IN ROMANIA

The paper highlights the relationship between vocational training providers and the micro-enterprise community in the context of the Strategy for Education and Vocational Training in Romania for the period 2016-2020 and that of the Europe Strategy 2020 that promotes smart growth through major investments in education. The research underlying this paper was carried out within an European project called ME2ME - Micro-Enterprise Learning Partnerships. The aim of the paper is to identify the current state of collaboration between Romanian VET providers and micro-business owners focusing on the following issues: the continuing availability of training providers to support entrepreneurial training or business development, the current relationship between VET providers and the micro-enterprise community. The main conclusions are: there are some barriers in providing training in the business field; VET representatives consider the following content as important in the training offer: problem solving, performance management, human resource management, communication, and IT; they see as very useful the training sessions, the small group meetings and peer-to-peer learning activities for which VET providers consider that there is great potential in learning among micro-enterprises owners.; there is a certain difference between the perceptions of the two groups regarding the learning methods used.