Verkmenntaskóli Austurlands (VA) is vocational school in Neskaupstaður, a town of about 1500 inhabitants in East Iceland. Neskaupstaður is a part of Fjarðabyggð municipality.

VA is in fact the only VET school in the east half of Iceland, from Akureyri to Selfoss.

​

We have 7 trades for vocational educations; electrician, house building, engineer, industrial Mechanics, practical nurses, hairdresser, assistant in kindergarten and elementary schools. We also offer students two ways in general education; study programme in Natural Science and in Social Sciences.

Recently we started a new trade, in Innovation and Technology - a new line of education which is a kind of mix between vocational studies and general education.

​

We are small school with about 250 students. Most of the students come from area in 50 km radius from Neskaupstaður.

Two years ago we opened a fabrication laboratory (Fab Lab) in the school and we are now aiming more towards technology, entrepreneurship and innovation.

​

Quality issues are very important to us and we are working on implementing quality system in our school, ISO 9001. The goal is to get quality certification in the next year or so.  

We collaborate with 12 Icelandic schools on secondary level, that are all located in rural parts of Iceland. Our goal is to increase the offer in trades both in general education and in vocational studies.