Vocational Educational Training For Skills, Competence and Practice for the Economy Erasmus Project

Project Title

Vocational Educational Training For Skills, Competence and Practice for the Economy

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: Entrepreneurial learning – entrepreneurship education; Teaching and learning of foreign languages; International cooperation, international relations, development cooperation

Project Summary

The project VET4SCAPE was a project for Higher Vocational Schools and wanted to improve the quality of that education. The title of the project refers to Vocational Educational Training for Skills, Competence and The Practice for the Economy. A similar project has preceded this one, the experiences from that project were implemented in this project. We implemented aspects laid down in the Declaration of the EU Ministers in charge of Vocational Education and Training for the period 2015 – 2020. (Riga conclusions 2015)
There were basically 3 pillars on which this project was built.
1)The central part was to form junior companies in order to get hands-on experience with economic activities. The students gained experience with JA firms by planning and running these firms and exchanged their experiences with junior firms from the partner schools. Thus we will stimulated creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship for their further careers. They got a certificate for participation in the junior achievement scheme. The firms were presented during a short term training event at the end of the project period. The goal was to strengthen entrepreneurship, especially in countries where it is difficult to set up a start-up company.
2) A second aspect dealt with enhancing the competence in Business English. Students trained certain topics to go in for an LCCI (London Chamber of Commerce and Industry) certificate. On these topics the students went in for mock exams, which improved their abilities to communicate, negotiate and act in a confident way in an international business environment.
3) The third pillar was to strenghten the students’ transcultural competence and ability to cooperate in an international team. For that they compiled a list of advice about do´s and don´ts for particular countries for which they needed to cooperate internationally. To be successful in business you must know the mentality and the background of a culture of a country to be able to succeed.

In a globalised world it is necessary to prepare our students for international activities as soon as possible. In this project students and teachers had the opportunity to get in contact with people from 6 other schools both directly and online.

The project targeted students and teachers from 7 VET schools in the project countries and stakeholders in connection with the schools (companies, local communities, parents, supporting organisztions like LCCI and Junior Achievement). The teachers involved in the project had the opportunity to obtain further knowledge and competence through professional development.

As economic activities are no longer limited to the national level, it is necessary to prepare the students for these activities on an international level and, therefore, we cooperated across borders (comparison of legal aspects for starting a business, salaries, educational systems, cross-border trade, etc.)

The results were made available to any interested stakeholders both on the VET4SCAPE eTwinning platform,and on the project website https://vet4scape.wixsite.com/erasmusplus. Furthermore, we offered the results in teacher´s groups on etwinning (English as a second Language, CLIL) to gain as much publicity as possible.

The main aim of the project was to get graduates who have undergone hands-on practical experience in the running of a real company and who have learned to cooperate in an international team. Furthermore their knowledge of business English has improved above average knowledge and the transnational competence has enabled them to behave and act in an appropriate way in business and regular day-to-day situations in project partner countries.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 130450 Eur

Project Coordinator

Bundeshandelsakademie und Bundeshandelsschule Linz & Country: AT

Project Partners

• Agrupamento de Escolas Augusto Cabrita
• Ekonomska sola Ljubljana
• Profesionalna gimnazia Asen Zlatarov
• Obchodni akademie, Ceske Budejovice, Husova 1
• Obchodná akadémia, Kálmána Kittenbergera 2, Levice
• Colegiul Economic Delta Dunarii Tulcea