Job experience is life experience Erasmus Project

Project Title

Job experience is life experience

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 : School Exchange Partnerships

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2019

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Labour market issues incl. career guidance / youth unemployment; Cooperation between educational institutions and business

Project Summary

Project background
It has always been our long term aspiration to support our students sometimes in non standard manners. Some of our German students terminate school with no certificate at all and some of them leave the school even prior to their final graduation. Through private contacts we know that our Spanish colleagues from the secondary school in Pinoso have similar problems. Over the last few months we have discussed different ways of motivating them for a better performance. Both of them are located in a rural environment and teach students who are put at a social disadvantage (migrants, refugees and educationally disadvantaged strata)

Project scope and activities
So we came to the idea to establish a German Spanish co-operation between our two secondary schools. The core of the idea is 5 day traineeship (work placement/work experience) both in Spain as well as in Germany. These would be embedded in 12 days of overall stays respectively in each country. The distinctive feature is building up teams of two people consisting of one German and one Spanish student for the time of the project. The members of the binational “tandem” teams work closely together and support each other. They are enabled to do so through matching their professional affinities and private interests. The coverage of interests is a key to efficient cooperation of team members and it has to be carried out before the work placements start. Additionally, the “tandems” should compile a presentation about similarities of and differences between their job experiences, the vocational training and how the chosen vocation is performed in each country. The students’ results will be presented to school authorities and representatives of involved companies and employer organisation. Finally, the presentation will be made available to the public for a short period of time by means of exhibition.
In order to enable our students to successfully perform their task five transnational project meetings are required. For the project closure and conclusion another project meeting is needed after the presentation.
Additionally, the project is being supported over the whole period of time by the career guidance of both countries and the “Berufseinstiegsbegleitung” which is a German measure co-financed by the European Social Fund.

Objectives of our project
It is our common intent to motivate our students to achieve better results in school and to prevent them from terminating school before graduation by establishing this project. Some of our students are endangered of aborting school before graduation because of their education, economic or origin related problems-
The goal of our Spanish partners is to provide those students who want to start a career after school with a guidance of how to choose the adequate profession. This is what we as secondary Bavarian „Mittelschule“ can offer them. Through this guidance of how to choose the right vocation and the work placements our Spanish partner intends to make the vocational choice easier und to reduce the chance of being affected by unemployment.
Furthermore, both schools aim at enabling their students to get to know each other in order to facilitate cross-cultural communication and sustainable learning. It is also our intent to develop and reenforce our student’s personality and to empower them to be able to participate actively in society. We try to achieve these competences through the programme’s particular features.
From an early stage on local companies will participate in our project. We want them to recognize these students’ capabilities once a programme like ours goes off the beaten tracks. The core is therefore to significantly increase their chance of receiving a solid training/apprenticeship.

Number of participants
Ten students of each school will take part.

Intended results and output
Both schools expect an enlarged motivation of our students towards school achievement. On our Spanish partner’s side we do expect a thorough giudance towards vocational choice (choice of occupation) as well as an obvious decline in being affected by unemployment once having finished school.
Furthermore, both schools intend to establish a mutual climate of appreciation, respect and sympathy and possibly friendship among our students.

Expected longterm objectives and benefit
We are both willing to pursue our cooperation after the project’s successful completion and to integrate its contents into our vocational concept. We also aim at taking away our students’ fear and timidity to look for a job in another EU member state in the future.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 65808 Eur

Project Coordinator

Mittelschule Parsberg & Country: DE

Project Partners

• IES JOSÉ MARHUENDA PRATS