Integrating Companies in a Sustainable Apprenticeship System Erasmus Project

Project Title

Integrating Companies in a Sustainable Apprenticeship System

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: Recognition, transparency, certification; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses

Project Summary

Dual Vocational Education and Training (VET) or apprenticeship schemes as a promising approach to overcome economic crisis in south Europe and to accelerate economic speed-up of former socialist states in East Europe are since years high on the agenda of European (e. g. European Framework for Quality and Effective Apprenticeships) and national policies. Consequently a manifoldness of approaches and projects have been started to support Work-Based Learning (WBL) in “all of its forms”, for a comprehensive overview see for example webpage WBL-toolkit (https://www.wbl-toolkit.eu). But when having a closer look at these approaches it has to be stated that many of them are rather far away from “real” apprenticeship schemes; most measures are internships, learning projects, simulations, etc. – and lack of sustainability after the end of projects` funding. To discern our approach from internships or learning projects, we refer to “curricula-driven WBL”. In our ERASMUS+ project “Integrating Companies in a Sustainable Apprenticeship System” (ICSAS) we worked (beside others) on the question, under which circumstances a successful curricula-driven WBL-pilot of 1 year can be integrated into the formal VET-regulations of Portugal (PT) and Romania (RO).
Another approach on policy level to increase linkage between VET and the labour markets have been Qualification Frameworks (QF). To achieve transparency and comparability of qualifications, National Qualification Frameworks (NQF) were established in the European countries and have been connected to the European Qualification Framework (EQF). In the last years already many papers were published, arguing that general Qualification Frameworks, might they claim national or transnational relevance, are somehow nothing but “a paradigmatic case of travelling educational reforms” (quoted from Bohlinger 2019). On the other hand, some evidence that Sector Qualifications Frameworks (SQF) could be of added value for enhanced transparency of qualifications in the respective sector has been published.
Against this background, we have drawn three conclusions for our research and development project:
• To include “sustainability” not only as a flowery phrase – but as a core element in our approach.
• To try to stop “travelling” of QF via giving an anchor in the form of a Sector Qualification Framework (SQF).
• And thus; consequently, to focus on one sector; only: Industrial shoe production.
Our project worked on the following questions:
• What could be learnt in real work-processes?
• What should be learnt in real work-processes?
• What are the supporting or hindering factors of including curricula-driven WBL in the governing of national VET-Systems?
• Is there any added value by Sector Qualification Frameworks (exemplarily)?
We found no “objective” or “hard” barriers for developing apprenticeships in countries with traditionally school-based VET; but a row of “subjective” or “weak” factors, like scepticism about quality of Learning Outcomes (LO) from curricula-driven WBL, concerns that apprentices are exploited as cheap work-force, uncertainties about roles of involved stakeholders, etc.. Despite these factors, we successfully designed, implemented and piloted a one-year lasting curricula-driven WBL in Portugal and Romania, in both countries a couple of learners benefitted and some dozens of skilled workers were trained for their role as WBL tutors. These curricula became part of the official apprenticeship career pathways in the Romanian region of Iasi and colleagues are negotiating with the other regions and national authorities about a broader implementation. In Portugal, ICSAS-curriculum became the core of a new national VET profile in shoe sector that is currently (autumn 2020) in the process of being developed and approved.
Apart from this, we developed a SQF (level 2-4); a mapping of the PT, RO, ES and DE qualifications from industrial shoe production with the potential of a benefit for holders of qualifications from the sector of industrial shoe production. The SQF is open for the leveling of qualifications from other countries.
All products and their linkage to the different Intellectual outputs (IO) are published under the result-tab of the project website http://icsas-project.eu/results/.
Default language setting is English (EN). The language versions of the products in Romanian (RO), Portuguese (PT), Spanish (ES) or German (DE) can be consulted via choosing the corresponding flag in the right corner of the top menu.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 443360,48 Eur

Project Coordinator

UNIVERSITAET BREMEN & Country: DE

Project Partners

• Carite – Calçados, Lda
• Gabor Shoes AG
• ISC-INTERNATIONAL SHOE COMPETENCE CENTER PIRMASENS GGMBH
• ANGELA INTERNATIONAL
• CENTRO TECNOLOGICO DE CALCADO DE PORTUGAL
• UNIVERSITATEA TEHNICA GHEORGHE ASACHI DIN IASI
• INSTITUTO TECNOLOGICO DEL CALZADO Y CONEXAS