SHERPA Erasmus Project

Project Title

SHERPA

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: Migrants’ issues; Labour market issues incl. career guidance / youth unemployment; Integration of refugees

Project Summary

By the time of the project application, the issue of immigration and the integration of immigrants were high on the policy agenda of EU and OECD countries, both from an economic and a social point of view. Active participation of immigrants in the labour market and, more generally, in public life was (and still is) vital for ensuring social cohesion in the host country and the ability of migrants to function as autonomous, productive and successful citizens. It is also critical for facilitating their acceptance by the host-country population. The reason for an exchange of Good Practices through PLAs was the fact that some European economies and societies are far more successful than others in integrating immigrants into their labour markets and better in offering opportunities to young immigrants to unfold their talents and obtain qualifications. The main objective was to share good practices, to learn from each other and to take over successful approaches, there where possible. For that reason the MBO Raad, as initiator of the project, tried to build a mixed partnership of policymakers on one hand and providers (schools) on the other. This succeeded in all partner countries, although the providers side was generally stronger represented.
It is also important to say that the flow of refugees has drastically decreased in the period between the birth of the project idea (mid 2016) and now, which made the project however not less important, as the groups are still there, but the huge sense of urgency was not the same as before and the number of newcomers was for all partners smaller than they expected at the start of the project. The partners realized however that such flows of newcomers can be repeated in the future, which made the focus on the transferability of the lessons learnt for future situations still very important.

According to the initial project plan, we had six (6) transnational meetings held in The Netherlands, Finland, Germany, UK. Sweden and Denmark.The partners prepared their own meetings (PLA’s), including a presentation of their institution, the work they are doing, their national or regional system and a selected number of Good Practices (interventions) regarding the integration of newcomers. After all these meetings, partners reflected on the value for them of the demonstrated GP’s by using a
standard reflection form about the possible application of the GP in their own daily practice. In this reflection it was also asked to explain how these good practices could be applied in the own situation and if not useful, why not.
Next to this, partners reported about their dissemination and valorisation activities and used a standard form for this, which was called the “Capturing and measuring reach of the project.” Finally all transnational meetings were evaluated by the AoC from the UK.

It needs to be said that all partners were rather satisfied with the composition of the partnership and the variety of Good Practices, as there was a large diversity of partners ranging from a rather small scale approach in Finland with relatively small groups of immigrants to the large scale integration policy in NL and UK, where a lot of the planning tends to be on a national level. This made that situations were not always comparable and that some of the GP’s might not be transferable, but it was nevertheless inspiring to see how partners are working on the same challenges, but with other legislations and on another scale.It was very informative to see how different political choices work out in the practice and to see the pro’s and contra’s of such choices. This was rather clear in the case of the rather strict (in the eyes of some partners: harsh) policy of Denmark (Randers). Newcomers were offered opportunities, but only if they participated in a full program of learning language and culture, whilst also working in companies. Staying away had immediately consequences for their income.
There has been one important change in the project and as a result of that also regarding the distribution of tasks, which was the cancelling of the second LTTA in Sweden. This was done in consultancy with the national NA, as we had made a mistake in the application by calculating only the travelling costs to the LTTA venues, but not the subsistence costs. In order to make it financial feasible, we decided in close consultation with the NA to have one LTTA instead of two. The change in the distribution of tasks was that The Swedish partner had not to organise a LTTA. In spite of having only one LTTA instead of two, we certainly reached our objectives. But it goes almost without saying that two LTTA’s should have had a wider impact than one, simply because we should have reached more people.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 125915 Eur

Project Coordinator

MBO RAAD & Country: NL

Project Partners

• Newham College of Further Education
• SCIENCE ENGINEERING AND MANUFACTURING TECHNOLOGIES ALLIANCE
• ROC Mondriaan
• Association of Colleges
• RANDERS KOMMUNE
• Vuxenutbildning Söderort
• SATAKUNNAN KOULUTUSKUNTAYHTYMA