A model of cooperation between a vocational school and an industry’s organization

<< Background >>East Automotive Alliance has been present in the area of vocational education for the last 5 years using its resources to enhance effectiveness and quality of teaching for the benefit of its members and automotive industry. It allowed to gain quite a lot of practical experience in mutual cooperation between business and education showing also some possibility for improvement in this area. It became clear it should be beneficial to exchange this experience and best practices with other European institutions acting in this field to further improve effectiveness of this process. Based on that it should be possible to create a model of effective cooperation between both the branches which could be broadly shared and gradually implemented. << Objectives >>The aim of this project was to create a model of cooperation between vocational secondary schools and enterprises that would allow the continuous improvement of the quality of teaching with adaptation to the requirements of the automotive industry. << Implementation >>Study visits to accustom stud. and teach. from differ. countries to the conditions of teaching and vocational training at workplaces. SV took place in PL and in CZ. These activ. contributed to the inclusion and adaptation of solutions and good pract. applied abroad in the developed model of cooper., including changes in curricula and internship programs at employers. Transnational Proj Meetings - understanding the proj, its goals and results required face-to-face meetings that allowed the partners to get to know each other and facilitate mutual info. exchange. Intellectual output to analyze and evaluate the existing conditions of cooper. between schools and companies, to show the shortcomings and directions for improvem. Necess. tools (instructions, procedures, plans) were created as well as the curricula based on info. and experience gained during meetings and study vis. to workplaces, were modified. Dissemination activities to familiarize a wide audience of schools, boards of directors, leading bodies, companies, clusters and organizations cooper. with the created cooperation model, the result of which would be the application of the model by interested institutions – vocat. schools and enterprises cooper. with them.<< Results >>During the project realization all the partners were able to:- get to know elements of vocational education systems, Polish and Czech, at national levels and their influence on possibility to modernize educational programs at schools - recognize mutual ways of partner companies’ involvement in cooperation with schools and exchange best practices - practice examples of an apprenticeship model at partner companies’ workshops - work on creation of a model of cooperation between enterprises and vocational schools based on possessed experiences and gained fresh knowledge- formalize the assumptions and describe the model of cooperation in a tangible form of a brochure - create partnership relations among the project’s partners Creation of the model and its application by schools and workplaces will allow for continuous improvement of quality of education by adapting it to the needs of the automotive industry.