Employability and Workplace Skills for VET Students

The project titled ‘Employability and Workplace Skills for VET Students’ has been implemented by a consortium formed of 7 partners, including VET providers/VET provider associations, VET support organizations and NGOs, between October 2015 and September 2017.In terms of context and addressed needs, the project met a series of realities present at the level of the partners organizations but also Europe-wide, the average youth unemployment rate being more than twice as high as the rate for adults in most Member States. With high numbers of young people declaring they can't find a job, and also many employers reporting problems in finding workers with appropriate skills, it was clear that graduates lack the transversal skills that may help them find and keep a job, and they don’t know where and how to search for a one.The project idea has been built around VET student’s needs of being equipped with transversal, employability and workplace skills to make them able to find and keep a job or start a small business after graduation, but also on institutional/organizational needs of both VET providers (who needed to strengthen their focus on employability and become more sensitive to the needs of the modern labour market) and employers’ (which need fresh workforce already equipped with workplace skills).The project was results-oriented, its main aim being to create a set of resources (an e-learning platform and a set of teaching and learning kits) to be used by a large number of final beneficiaries in order to develop transversal skills necessary for a successful labour market integration of the VET graduates.The most important objectives successfully reached by the project were related to: - Equipping with Employability, Entrepreneurship & Workplace Skills at least 100 students by the end of the project – we already have more than 600 certificates already issued for the online course;- Developing and making available as OER new, innovative and adapted to the labour market needs new VET teaching and learning materials, by exploiting the potential of ICT ;- Training VET teachers/trainers to use the developed resources by the end of the project;- Facilitating contact between the available qualified workforce and employers;- Fostering transnational cooperation between VET education providers and potential employers and align the skills of the students to the labour market requirements;- Increasing the visibility of the VET qualified students/graduates on the labour market by equipping them with personal branding skills;In order to reach the above-mentioned objectives, 2 intellectual outputs have been developed (both available in all partner’s languages):O1 - The E-learning Platform with 9 Modules: 1.Personal And Professional Development2. Job Searching, CV Writing and Interview Skills Development3. Professional Image and Personal Branding4. Customer Care5.Team Work And Intercultural Skills6. Rights And Responsibilities In The Workplace7. Effective Communication, Time Management & Social Intelligence In The Workplace8. Professional Communication In English9. Entrepreneurship SkillsO2 – The Teaching and Learning Kit, a resource complimentary to the e-platform to be used by teachers/trainers/career counsellors in class activities.In order to develop this last output, 3 teachers from each VET education provider attended a joint staff training event organized by HETEL (Spain) on cooperative learning, entrepreneurship, career-guidance and job hunting.Also, 3 Multiplier Events have been organized in Belgium, Romania and Republic of Macedonia. Each partner brought specific experience and skills to the partnership, along with access to different and most relevant target groups for dissemination.Apart from IOs, multiplier events and learning activities, we have also organized 7 webinars (each partner involving at least 20 VET professional) in order to train them in using the resources.The coordinating institution from Romania piloted a special activity, which was not initially foreseen into the application but proven to be a great success and will be undertaken by the other partners during the following year, in order to ensure sustainability and exploitation beyond the partnership. A regional VET providers networks have been set up, partnership contracts being signed – representatives from more than 20 VET high-schools were trained on how to use the resources and implement them into their day by day activity during the current school yearBy the present moment, a number of over 2000 online tests have been taken by students from different organizations and 600 certificates already issued. The project has reached a large target audience including EU-wide VET networks, the impact on the partner organizations evaluated as highly significant and impact beyond the partnership also visible already.