Cotecno has gained a great deal of experience in defining strategies aimed at improving the services delivered by education and vocational training organisations. In this context, great attention has been paid to the integration of these organisations in the national education and training system and to establish an effective liaison between the national education system and the labour market and local productive sector.

This approach has enabled Cotecno to broaden its range of experience to include institutional development and capacity building intervention addressed to national institutions to improve their planning and services delivery capacity as well as processing and implementing sector-wide strategies and policies in the Education and VET sectors.

Over the years, Cotecno has analysed education and training needs, elaborated training programmes, designed maps of training supply and demand, organised training courses for trainers and trainees, developed curricula, provided assistance for the definition of training policies, built institutions as an intermediary between the labour market and training provision, developed international partnerships and collaboration links between universities and vocational training centres and has overseen internal re-organisations of training institutions and national universities.

Some examples of the technical assistance and specialised consulting services provided by Cotecno in this area include:

• EC/“Upgrading the Higher Education Sector” in Syria (2007 - ongoing);
  
• the Italian Region of Sicily/“Higher Education - Feasibility Study for the Realisation of the Mediterranean Polytechnic” in Italy (2003 - 2005);
  
• EC/“Strengthening the Vocational Training Centre for Technical and Industrial Design of Montevideo” in Uruguay (1999 - 2004);
  
• EC/“Technical assistance support for the monitoring and evaluation of the EC-Support to the Aga Khan Development Network in the Northern territories and Chitral” in Pakistan (2000 - 2003);
  
• EC/“Diagnostic Study and Audit of 25 Vocational Training Centres in the framework of the MANFORME programme” in Tunisia (2000 - 2001).