Competences for Employability: Learning about Employability to Generate Actions and Competences for Young people Erasmus Project

Project Title

Competences for Employability: Learning about Employability to Generate Actions and Competences for Young people

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for school education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2017

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Early School Leaving / combating failure in education; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; Entrepreneurial learning – entrepreneurship education

Project Summary

Context/Background:
Increasingly, young people are prevented from becoming economically & socially mobile through a lack of globally recognised employability skills.

Three European partners in England, the Czech Republic and the Netherlands, led by Avonbourne Academy (a nationally and internationally famous organisation with many years experience of Enterprise Education) applied to develop a set of entrepreneurial competences and a suite of transversal employability skills for students of compulsory school age.

It was recognised that through our co-operation, we could develop pedagogical practice & curricula design to enable students to acquire these skills and to prepare them for vocational training, education post school age & the job market.

The planned project would thus respond to a need for a common understanding of employability skills amongst educators and employers globally. Without this, the mobility of young people is dependent on one country recognising another’s curriculum & skills priority. A set of Europe-wide competences could then be delivered through a common pedagogical approach, ensuring that young people across the EU develop skills & competences acknowledged across Europe.

Objectives:
4 Intellectual Outputs:
O1: An agreed set of employability skills (ES) and entrepreneurial competences (EC).
O2: A programme of study for ES and EC with an accompanying assessment matrix & guidance on pedagogical approaches to the successful teaching of ES and EC.
O3: A guide to curricula and extra-curricular design which will enable the teaching of ES and EC.
O4: An employers’ package to enable schools to engage with employers through collaboration with local and transnational employers and further education providers.

Number and profile of participants:
1. Avonbourne Academy (UK): The College has approximately 1200 students aged 11-16, from a deprived area of the UK.
2. Střední odborná škola Nové Město na Moravě (Czech Republic): a middle-sized secondary school (about 400 students) providing special educational programmes in business, logistics and economics, railway transport and a number of vocational programmes.
3. Zeldenrust-Steelantcollege (Netherlands): a Comprehensive school with 1,500 pupils between the ages of 12 and 18 in the Dutch province of Zeeland. The school offers all Dutch secondary education levels, vocational up to pre-university.
4. Lodewijk College (Netherlands): a Comprehensive school with 2,500 pupils between the ages of 12 and 18 in the Dutch province of Zeeland. The school offers all Dutch secondary education levels, vocational up to pre-university. In addition Lodewijk College provides First Reception classes for Non-native speakers and Learning Support Education.

Activities:
Initial meeting in Bournemouth (UK), followed by 5 further transnational meetings. These meetings involved sharing action research, clarifying the intellectual outputs, monitoring the progress of the project and experiencing firsthand the good practice being undertaken in partner schools. Continual contact was maintained between teacher researchers and associate partners to develop and refine materials; contact between members of the Operational Steering Committee to oversee the running of the project was also undertaken. Action research was undertaken with students and associate partners to validate findings and refine materials and this included the development and implementation of questionnaires which were completed by teachers, partners, parents and students. A Google drive was set up for the sharing of resources and pedagogical experimentation findings. Written reports were regularly submitted to the Operational Steering Committee from the lead teacher/researcher.

Results and impact attained, longer term benefits:
Teachers in our establishments are now better equipped to teach Employability Skills and Entrepreneurial Competences; they now have access to a range of materials to undertake this and other institutions will now be able to access these materials as well. The discourse between partners and associate partners, who were local employers, educators and entrepreneurs, has raised the chances of our students to gain transnational employment, to be better prepared for the world of work, to acquire skills required by local employers and to be more motivated as entrepreneurs; evidence from the latter can be gleaned from Case Studies from the Peter Jones Foundation, an associate partner. As a consequence of the UK lead undertaking this project, a link has been established between Bournemouth University and the Nové Město na Moravě school to undertake further study on effective vocational education.

In the longer term, this project should develop better working relationships between schools, employers & further education establishments. Students should be more capable of gaining employment locally because the needs of employers are better understood.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 43948,8 Eur

Project Coordinator

Avonbourne Academy & Country: UK

Project Partners

• Zeldenrust-Steelantcollege
• Stredni odborna skola Nove Mesto na Morave
• Stichting Voortgezet Onderwijs Zeeuws-Vlaanderen