The World of Work – Preparing for Real Life Adventures in School Education Erasmus Project

Project Title

The World of Work – Preparing for Real Life Adventures in School Education

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 Schools Only

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2017

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Labour market issues incl. career guidance / youth unemployment; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; Enterprise, industry and SMEs (incl. entrepreneurship)

Project Summary

While at school our students are protected from the outside world. They just need to go with the flow and do their best to finish compulsory school successfully. However, when they leave school or university they are faced with their first life challenge: being able to find their first job. Bearing this in mind, it is rather important to provide our students with useful tools which will definitely be helpful when the time comes to find the most suitable job for each one of them.
Therefore, this project “The World of Work – Preparing for Real Life Adventures in School Education” aims at helping young adults to achieve their professional goals by getting to know the current labour market in the three partner countries: in Bulgaria, Hungary and Portugal; by becoming aware of their strengths and weaknesses; and by becoming acquainted with active job search techniques and entrepreneurship.
Throughout the project, and as expected, there were four Transnational Project Meetings and three Learning, Teaching and Training Activities: two Short-term joint staff training events and a Short-term exchange of groups of pupils. On the whole, the no. of teachers who participated in the TPM was fifteen, in the LTT Activities there were eighteen teachers, and in the LTT Activities for students there were thirty. During the two years around thirty teachers and around five hundred students were involved in the different activities. The teachers that engaged in the project were highly motivated to contribute with their expertise. The students, on the other hand, were secondary school students, from regular or vocational education, as they were the main target subjects of the whole project.
To start with, it was important to find out the secondary school students’ expectations when leaving school by answering a questionnaire. The results of this questionnaire show what the older students from the three partner schools intend to do when they finish school, what difficulties they expect when looking for their first job, how much they expect to earn, among others.
In the International Study on Labour Market created by the Portuguese team there are also the results of the focus groups research on the features of each country’s labour market, in which there is a comparison between the data collected from the three partner schools regarding the following topics: each country’s population; no. of young people aged between 18 and 30 years old; unemployment rate between 18-30 years old; jobs/courses with the highest and lowest employment rate; unemployed education level; employed according to their level of education; and youth emigration. By checking this International Study on Labour Market our students can find valuable information that might help them tread a fruitful path.
Then, it was time to move on to a personal level by attending TIE – Theater in Education workshops, which consisted in TIE role games aimed at students‘ self-knowledge and self-consciousness, i.e. getting to know one‘s strengths, weaknesses and personal skills and competences. As a result, the Bulgarian team produced a Methodology Book on these TIE workshops. At the same time, the 12th form Portuguese students attended information sessions performed by a psychologist, a sociologist and a representative of the job center. Both the psychologist and the sociologist dealt with the personal development, i.e. the self-consciousness. In order to know their own strengths and weaknesses better, the students were asked to fill in a questionnaire by Myers Briggs. After finding out the results of this self-knowledge tool, the students got to know what type of person they are and what they will be like in a future job scenario. Besides, a few suggestions were also given so that they could take advantage of their strengths and weaknesses, not only in their personal life, but also in the labour market. On the other hand, the representative of the job center focused on active job search techniques, which the Hungarian team worked on and created a booklet. This Booklet on Job Searching Techniques is a useful tool when looking for a job as it contains, step by step, the necessary information to accomplish this goal.
Finally, at the Learning, Teaching, Training Activities: Short-term exchange of groups of pupils that took place at the Portuguese school, the thirty students, who attended this meeting, had the chance to develop their entrepreneurship skills in order to start designing their own future by setting up Start-up ideas.
The end products produced by the three partner countries can be useful tools to prepare our secondary students for their future real life adventures outside the school gates, whether they go to university or join the labour market after leaving school.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 66932 Eur

Project Coordinator

Escola Básica e Secundária com P/E da Calheta & Country: PT

Project Partners

• Budapesti Gazdasági Szakképzési Centrum Békésy György Szakgimnáziuma és Szakközépiskolája
• Secodary school “Peyo Yavorov”