Circular economy and entrepreneurship to boost VET students’ employability and resilience
Context
The transition from school into professional life is one of the most challenging moments in life. The competitive and unpredictable job market requires young people to be qualified, but also able to adapt to contemporary and future societal problems.
Youth in training do not have enough knowledge and experience to decide whether being self-employed is a suitable career choice. Therefore, vocational and technical education needs to provide individuals with the necessary occupational skills while considering the demands of the business world. This project focuses on helping VET STUDENTS gain sufficient understanding of entrepreneurship, targeting subjects such as sustainability and circular economy. This will increase their problem-solving abilities and find meaningful solutions to professional issues.
Aim of the project
The partners aim at developing OER Open Educational Resources /ICT-based education tools and resources to:
- Support VET teachers in offering more engaging learning experiences to young people
- To facilitate apprentices/VET students’ enhancement of key transversal skills needed by the current labour market
The project addresses the need for a more resilient workforce that is aware and informed on what sustainability is and how to make sustainable choices. To be proactive in their support of green SMEs, they need to be aware of how the circular economy works. In this context, entrepreneurial skills are used as activators of a wider set of proficiencies requested by the actual labour market and that has been already formalised by other EU-level institutions.
Impact
To prepare students for their initiation into the labour market, we, the VET schools (or those supporting the VET teachers in their improvement process) must constantly improve and update competencies, to meet the student’s needs. The skills of the school’s staff are key in this process. Teachers need to update their skills constantly and support their students to compete both in the labour market and in life.
The project in its general approach to entrepreneurship and competencies improvement is also based on an overview by Education and Training 2020 (ET 2020): “The labour market is constantly evolving. Skills, competencies, and qualifications that people need change over time. To deal with these changes people need to be equipped with a variety of basic skills, including literacy, numeracy, foreign languages, science and digital skills.”
Results
- Create a clear, comprehensive skills framework blending transversal, entrepreneurial and green skills needed by the actual labour market, needed by VET EDUCATORS to boost their students’ preparation.
- Design and test a professional development programme for VET EDUCATORS to upgrade their preparation to foster their ability to support VET students in developing selected competencies.
- Create the CE-E VET library composed of OER and ready-to-use materials VET educators can use to foster employability skills in VET students.
Skills for students and best practices
The partners studied and analysed different EU level skills and competence framework, to create a list of the skills and competence the labour market needs. The list has been then validated with different experts and it is now available on the project website.
Manual for educators
The second tool created by the partners is the MANUAL FOR GREEN AND RESILIENT VET EDUCATORS. The contents are useful for educators and trainers that need to know more about circular economy and entrepreneurial competences. The manual is available on the project website and on the website of the partners.
LIBRARY (coming soon)
The partners are now working to produce the CEE VET library, composed by ready to use materials as (micro-lessons, text, games, reading materials, exercises, presentations, infographics…) that VET teachers can associate to any class or lesson on key concepts encompassing sustainability, entrepreneurial skills, responsibility. The different resources are presented in different format to allow teachers to have a variety of different tools that can be easily associated with any class or activity.
Newsletter
Project’s information
- Duration 24 months, 01/01/2022 to 31/12/2024
- ID 2021-1-RO01-KA220-VET-000032984
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ENG TO DO
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