Description
The project intends to promote an innovative training concept which can narrow the gap between knowledge and competences acquired at school and those required by the companies. The aim is to motivate learners to remain in education and training and complete their IVET programmes, and to increase the competences of each student during their studies.
To reach this aim, the project developed guidelines and frameworks that can help VET institutions to adopt innovative methodologies and re-think learning environments, organisation of the academic’s year calendar and learning approaches.
Beneficiaries
Students who are attending a VET course.
Countries
Education level and sector
Type of policy/initiative
Level of implementation / Scope
Stage of implementation
Since year 2018.
Aims of policy/initiative
The specific objectives of the ESW initiative are to analyse and adapt the English UTC (University Technical Colleges) model to other contexts.
The project analysed the UTC model and reached the following results:
- elaboration of a model (organisational and educational variables) transferable to all contexts;
- transferability of this model and adaptation to VET centres in the project’s participating countries.
Features and types of activities implemented
The main deliverables of the projects are:
TRANSFERABILITY GUIDELINES (EN, IT, DE, ES)
The transferability guidelines, i.e. the process to put into practice and reach the “ideal-type school model” able to support student retention and provide youngsters with key and professional competences.
The guidelines adopt a practical approach adaptable to different contexts, based on modularisation: the guidelines are divided into four thematic areas, each area consists of eight guidelines, each of which provides a certain number of methodological principles. Even though each of the guidelines is strictly connected with the others, they represent recommendations that can be partially applied, thus realising a version of the concept model suited for the local context, based on the situation and goals of the local community.
Another feature of the guidelines is that they have been elaborated and validated by a scientific community in different steps of their development: from an initial draft, submitted to a council of experts who proposed amendments up to their final version.
TOOLS AND SUPPORT MATERIAL FOR DEVELOPING NEW CURRICULUM BASED ON THE GUIDELINES
The project created also a toolkit to integrate soft skills for employability in the curricula and a specific template for designing such curricula.
Resources
Erasmus + Project number: 2018-1-IT01-KA202-006754
Evaluation of the measure
ESW project is still running. The evaluation will take place at the end of the project (end of 2021).
All the results and activities of the project are available here: https://earlyschoolworkers.eu/
Evidence of effectiveness of the measure
The project transferred the experience of the UTC colleges in the UK adapting it to other contexts’. The UTC approach addressed efficiently a major problem in the UK which is retaining 15-17 year-old students in education and training and thus reduced early school leaving.
Success factors
The main strength of this initiative is that of having adapted an existing successful approach/model already in place in the UK to other contexts taken into consideration their particularities.
The project analysed the model, with its theoretical and practical features, and developed practical guidelines transferable to different contexts.
