Skills beyond the Seas Erasmus Project

Project Title

Skills beyond the Seas

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 2018

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Inclusion – equity; Recognition, transparency, certification; Labour market issues incl. career guidance / youth unemployment

Project Summary

he Maritime Sector is currently facing a paradox and difficult situation of a current shortage of young seafarers and also medium- to long-term redundancy threats due to the technical developments: whilst maritime businesses cannot find the desired workforce and young people are not attracted to the sector, the unmanned remote or autonomous ship is on the horizon and the roadmaps indicate that the first remote controlled commercial ship could soon hit the water (Rolls Royce white paper “Remote and Autonomous Ships”, 2016).
Therefore, whilst currently there is still a high demand for seafarers and overall numbers in the EU are significant (around 254.000 active seafarers and 25,000 to 35,000 students in Maritime Education and Training), their future employment and career perspectives are very uncertain.
The “Skills Beyond the Seas” Project designed two tools that provide seafarers and MET students with a detailed list of their formal and informal skills and suggests onshore occupations where these skills are applicable and needed. The tools provide these users with options and ideas of new career opportunities and highlight transferable skills sets. They also turn this situation into an opportunity for disadvantaged youth to gain social inclusion by entering a sector in need of young workers and offering high level VET training.
The partner consortium of the Skills Beyond the Seas project brought together five partners from four EU countries who are closely linked to the seafarers, MET target groups and youth and are experts in qualification and skills analysis.
They jointly:
a) analysed and identified transferable hard and job-specific skills that are held by five seafarer qualifications, using ECVET principles of knowledge, skill and competences and IMO Model course curricula,
b) identified onshore jobs and careers that utilise these transferable skills (from the obvious university lecturer or shipping company office job to more obscure positions like land surveyor, manager, hotel director, etc.),
c) developed the SkillsPath Tool that provides the target groups with options of career moves,
d) developed the Informal Skills Scanner that identifies and assesses transversal informal skills held by the user in order to widen their personal skills portfolio and support their career opportunities.

Through the Skillspath Tool and the Informal Skills Scanner the Skills Beyond the Seas project offers a pathway to employability and job mobility for existing seafarers and MET students throughout the EU28 and these tools facilitate their transition to on-shore careers by harnessing and validating their specific formal, transversal and informal skills in a comprehensive skills profile. At the same time the project tools offer mid- to long-term perspectives to disadvantaged youth and facilitate thereby their entry into the sector.

In a wider perspective, the Skills Beyond the Seas Project has developed scalable and transferable Outputs. By incorporating components of several EU tools into its methodology (such as ECVET, Europass and ESCO), the project developed a model that can easily be transferred to other VET sectors in order to support the mobility of workforce across different sectors and create flexible pathways in line with learners’ and employees needs and objectives.
The project thereby delivers an important contribution to the “New Skills Agenda for Europe”, that aims at “making better use of the skills that are available” as well as fulfilling the requirements of the ET2020 strategic framework.

Project Website

http://www.skillsbeyondtheseas.eu

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 286368 Eur

Project Coordinator

Sea Teach S.L. & Country: ES

Project Partners

• Danmar Computers sp z o.o.
• UNIVERSITAT POLITECNICA DE CATALUNYA
• TURK LOYDU UYGUNLUK DEGERLENDIRME HIZMETLERI ANONIM SIRKETI
• POMORSKI FAKULTET U RIJECI