"It's easy to forget about people when you're dealing with policies all the time," said Henrik Faudel, the European Training Foundation's (ETF) head of geographical operations opening the regional conference on social inclusion, in Tel Aviv, Israel, on the 11th November.

But people, and particularly vocational school teachers and students, were the main focus of the discussions between representatives from across the Western Balkans, Turkey and Israel.

At the conference the CoE secretariat was invited to share reflections on the findings, conclusions and recommendations on how to build on achievements through the Joint European Union and Council of Europe Project "Regional Support for Inclusive Education".

As part of a long-running initiative on social inclusion in education and training, the ETF together with experts from the London School of Economics and specialists from the region, carried out research involving schools, teachers and students in the nine participating countries.

The aim was to investigate the impact of policy and practice in vocational education and training (VET) on social inclusion and social cohesion. Three schools were selected in each country for in-depth analysis and around 750 teachers and 2,750 students replied to a questionnaire.

The 9 country reports, event discussions, and related documents and photos from the school visits are available here.