Benchmarking Education to Improve the New Generation skills Erasmus Project

Project Title

Benchmarking Education to Improve the New Generation skills

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 2019

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Civic engagement / responsible citizenship; Early School Leaving / combating failure in education; Inclusion – equity

Project Summary

In 2015, the World Economic Forum (WEF) published a report which focused on the issue of the students’ lack of skills and the means to find a solution to this. In this report, 16 paramount skills were defined for the education of the twenty-first century. These competences are composed of six « fundamental literacies », and 10 more skills.
The skills are the means by which the students take up complex challenges. They cover collaboration, communication, critical thinking and problem solving. According to the WEF, the skills which are considered as a cornerstone to succeed professionally and socially in tomorrow’s world are mainly developed by methodologies known as SEL : Social-Emotional Learning.
The UNESCO published a guide entitled Guiding Principles for Learning in the Twenty-First Century which aims at answering the following question : What do the students of the twenty-first century exactly need to learn ? The subjects usually taught at school since the Enlightenment, are still required by the universities and still relevant. Nevertheless, it is more and more commonly admitted that new fields of knowledge, of competences, and a new area of behaviour have to be included in the curricula if we expect the young people to fit in a globalized and complex society.
Developing critical thinking, a social and societal conscience, but also creativity, communcation, and collaboration are the missions of the twenty-first century teachers.
It is through modern educational propositions which include learning through play, strengthening analysis and reasoning, team working, and spreading respect and tolerance that the teachers will educate the citizens of the twenty-first century.

The assessment is the following : the teachers are not trained enough to new educational approaches ; the collaboration between the actors of non-formal education who base their methods on the « social emotional learning » is too often sporadic and doesn’t really enable an exchange of practice.

Through a former KA 201 project entitled « Young Ambassadeurs of fairtrade » (JACE in French), three high schools worked closely together along with three NGOs specialized in fairtrade during three years. This collaboration aimed at offering a motivating project to the students, at getting them involved in their learning, and therefore at limiting the dropping out of school. The sessions were co-animated by the teachers and the other protagonists of the projects, and allowed for the meeting of formal and non-formal educational methods.
The tangible impact of this project was the evolution of the teachers’ practices as the NGOs’ organizers brought along with them different ways of raising awareness : learning through play, sharing one’s opinion in moving debates, defending one’s ideas and advocating fairtrade with MEPs, convincing others schoolmates of the possibility of a fairer world… so many learning situations which enable to increase tomorrow’s skills.

We may then wonder to what extent a collaboration between the protagonists of non-formal education and the teachers enables the evolution of their educational practices and competences to prepare the students for the challenges of the twenty-first century better ?

Four European high schools (France, Portugal, Norway and Sweden), two active NGOs in the field of fairtrade and a French university are going to try out and assess the contribution of such a collaboration during two years.

The objective of this BEING project are several :
– To increase the teachers’ skills to implement modern educational systems
– To strengthen the collaboration between the worlds of the formal and non-formal education to offer solutions anchored in society’s stakes
– To identify and share the learning situations which promote the students’ acquisition of the twenty-first century skills

The activities of the project will enable :
– The creation of a portfolio of competencies for the teachers of the twenty-first century
– The measure of the project’s impact led by the GREThA, CNRS mixed research unit – University of Bordeaux
– An exchange of practices among the participants
– The dissemination of the educational activities led throughout the project on a referencing collaborative space

We expect to prove, through the experience we will have, through the measurement of the project’s impact as well as with the quality of the resources created, that a collaboration between the protagonists of non-formal education and the teachers enables a tangible evolution in the field of education and an increase in the teachers’ skills to better show the way to the citizens our students will become.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 76931,7 Eur

Project Coordinator

OGEC Lycée Technique Bel Orme & Country: FR

Project Partners

• Fédération Artisans du Monde
• ENAIP VENETO IMPRESA SOCIALE
• EQUO GARANTITO ASSEMBLEA GENERALE ITALIANA DEL COMMERCIO EQUO E SOLIDA
• Sandefjord videregående skole
• Agrupamento de Escolas de Albufeira
• UNIVERSITE DE BORDEAUX