VETBUS Improving guidance for better career choices for life Erasmus Project

Project Title

VETBUS Improving guidance for better career choices for life

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 vocational education and training

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2017

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Quality Improvement Institutions and/or methods (incl. school development); Entrepreneurial learning – entrepreneurship education; Labour market issues incl. career guidance / youth unemployment

Project Summary

VETBUS had been an “exchange of best practices” project in the area of VET, focused particularly on a set of activities related to guide students and their families in choosing the secondary school and their career. Although over 13 million learners are engaged in VET each year, forecasts in several Member States indicate that there will be a shortage of people with VET qualifications in the future. But for many young people and their parents VET remains a second choice. Skills mismatches can only be reduced by improving skills relevance through VET business partnerships.

VETBUS general objective was to improve the attractiveness and image of vocational education and training, because VET leads to high-quality jobs and increased employability.
Specific envisaged objectives:
– Improve existing activities carried out by VET organizations and related to developing VET-business partnerships in 5 EU Countries.
– Increase the synergy among local stakeholders (companies, VET schools, VET providers, Public Authorities, employers associations) in order to get a qualified labour force available at local level.

VETBUS lasted 16 months and activities were organized as follows:
1. Documentation phase: analysis of each participating country/region employability trends
2. Exchange phase: each partner hosted a study visit in order to share its own experience/best practice about vocational skills orientation and business-education partnerships
3. Replication phase: each partner selected, adapted and locally implemented one or more activities learned by other partners
4. Evaluation phase: measure of results and sharing of conclusions for sustainable strategies.

1/2 teachers/trainers from each partner organisation attended the 5 international trainings during the Exchange phase; participants to the replication phase were, depending on the nature of the practice to be tested, students from 13-18 years old and their families, teachers from secondary and VET schools and employers. Partnership’s expectations were to involve a minimum of 200 participants for each local activity. Final end users were much higher in all countries.

VETBUS aimed to impact on participants, increasing their knowledge on VET business initiatives; on involved organisations, increasing the capacity to offer new services and approaches to fill the local labour market and skills gap; on local stakeholders, mainly public, that will were made aware of new methodology for designing local policies on employment and skills acquirement innovation; on target groups, that were beneficiaries of effective actions to increase their chances of employment.

The project was designed to study, adapt and experiment promising foreign practices with the long-term goal of being replicated on regular basis in local context using different funding options (ESF, national public/private sources). The project generated long term effects on organizations and nations involved adopting new practices in their mainstream activities.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 92245,25 Eur

Project Coordinator

CENTOFORM SRL & Country: IT

Project Partners

• LUPO PROD SRL SIBIU
• Opplæringskontoret for Resepsjon-, Restaurant- og Matfag i Agder
• Proyecta Mejora Empresarial, S.L.
• Comune di Cento
• AUST-AGDER FYLKESKOMMUNE
• Pracodawcy Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej
• Colegiul Tehnic “Cibinium” Sibiu