This strategic partnership project aims to help move VET schools and colleges to the next level with respect to internationalisation. The partners in this project strongly believe that a successful and innovative strategic partnership will play a central role in positioning our activities nationally and internationally. There are a number of ad hoc partnerships that participate in mobility and innovative projects within EU funded programmes. However, the disadvantages that present themselves with year to year funding are significant to hinder and prevent the development of alliances between institutions that could provide real added value and benefits to students, staff and the local economy.This project aims to forge a formal strategic partnership between four large organisations. It will explore the breadth and depth to which this partnership can stretch to bring benefit to their vision and priorities as well as those of their locality and region. Each partner will identify their institutional goals, taking full account of their regional economies, and a process of sharing and agreeing a common agenda for collaboration will be undertaken. Local and regional stakeholders will be consulted on this draft partnership agreement and measures will be put in place to ensure the sustainability of the strategic alliance and its activities. A log will record the development and unfolding of the partnership process, its scope and nature, the barriers and the best and worst bits that do or don't work. Partnership will help to develop quality placements based on partners' experience and knowledge of the productive or service sectors.The previous cooperation with companies in their areaswill be crcucial to provide work placements for teachers and students: - On one hand, because every partner would know the companies activities and would know how they fit on participants' profiles,- An on the other hand because every partner will be able to facilitate agreements and suitable conditions.Out of this experience the partnership will produce a manual that would assist other potential strategic partnerships in the VET sector. The project will enhance the aims of the Mobility Charter by aligning strategic policies between institutions and by sharing common ambitions and objectives.

No one will wake up one day as a top talent. You yourself have a lot of influence on becoming good at something. But education also plays an important role in promoting excellence. About 5 to 10% of the VET students can achieve considerably more than the framework of the current curriculum allows them. Students who want and are able to do more, get the opportunity to follow additional programs with added value. This way they will achieve more than is expected beforehand. Excellence programs can act as a catalyst to stimulate students to achieve higher goals. The excellence programs focus not only on cognitive performance, but also on craftsmanship, creativity, entrepreneurship and international competences. With excellence programs, attention will be paid to excellent students in VET education witch will have a favourable effect on the reputation of VET education in general. The main question is; What is excellent education and how do we offer it to students?The primary target group of this project is teachers (+/- 30 in total) who are willing to learn more about excellent education. The secondary target group is students (+/-60 in total) who are willing to be challenged in excellent education and can give feedback on the different programs. Feedback of both target groups is important to learn about their views on excellent education and for developing a vision for excellent education.The desired impact of this project is:• Building a bridge between VET education and higher career skills and competences• Improve the reputation of VET education• Social inclusion for talented and ambitious students• Open teachers eyes to different way of teachingWe expect to raise the awareness for the need of excellent education and change the attitudes of teachers towards this subject. We will teach teachers skills and competences around excellent education such as the learning pit (James Notthingham), growth mindset (Carrol Dweck), creative thinking, etc.The expected output of the project and upon completion are;• Talking the same language about excellent education• Teach teachers about excellent education and how they can stimulate deep level learning by their students• Use each other’s best practices and test them in your own country• An international networkFurthermore we think that the dissemination of the results of the project will have a positive effect on attracting motivated students to VET education and reduce the bad reputation it has in some countries at the moment. To reach the objectives 4 transnational meetings will be held and 3 learning teaching trainings. During the transnational meetings will have the following objectives;1.Get acquainted, introduction and mutual clarification2.Discussions, status and progression in the actions3.Evaluation of the performed actions, divide tasks for following year,4.Reflection, evaluation, dissemination of the project to international group of teachersThe learning teaching training activities have the following content;November 2020 Malaga Business Bootcamp SpainJongLeren.es/Santa Maria de los Angeles will provide Málaga Business Bootcamp for teachers and students in collaboration with local organisations. In this 2 week bootcamp, students will live on their own, learn Spanish and work on a project provided by a local business.May 2021 Skills Heroes FinlandStudents will visit the finals of the national skills competition and will have their own skills competition on entrepreneurial/soft skills. Teachers will coach the students during this competition and will have a workshop and learn how to integrate skills in the curricula.November 2021 Teacher Training / Directors vision / BrainBoost & Up NetherlandsStudents will experience parts of the BrainBoost program and the Up program. Teachers and directors will have a training on the vision for excellent education, coaching excellent students and integrate excellent education in their curricula using practical tools.During the LTTA's the steering group, teachers and students will have the opportunity to develop competences related to excellent education. This will open teacher’s eyes on a different way of teaching and coaching students. Also students will learn about the growth mindset, creative thinking and the learning pit. They will experience a deeper level of learning. They can develop higher career skills and competences due to excellent education. During these LTTA's we will develop the same language on the different subjects and on excellent education. They will also work on expanding their (international) network by meeting each other. If they disseminate what they have learned within their own organizations, the network will grow. By learning about each other's methods of excellent education, we can use the best practices in our own organization and try out what works and what doesn't. The steering group will have separate meetings to reflect and evaluate on activities.

For a young vulnerable student at the lower levels of vocational education the first steps into the workplace are daunting. This is a whole new environment for them and they often lack the social skills and the social experience to adapt and function properly and quickly. They will often feel insecure and are likely to react in unacceptable ways in difficult situations. For example, when they face criticism. Often the consequence is that either students leave the placement or are sent away. In either case this nearly always means the end of the training course as students generally drop out completely. The Junior Job Coach programme has been set up In order to prevent this common event from happening by providing a student at risk with a “buddy”, a trained coach, who at a distance from the workplace can offer immediate support and advice. Having been carefully matched with a well-trained junior coach, a vulnerable student can call on support at the workplace by using social media such as WhatsApp and text, so that any problems or difficulties become manageable and the student at risk always has ‘friend” at hand to fall back on.The Junior Job Coach project has developed a successful support methodology along with accompanying materials to assist and retain students at risk of dropping out from work experience and apprenticeships. This innovative project has made available three new products: a Competence Framework for peer coaches; a flexible and modular training programme for junior job coaches; and a toolkit for employers to complement and strengthen their own support structures for new employees. An implementation guide also accompanies these materials to assist in their introduction. The materials are freely available in English, Dutch, Spanish German and Romanian on the project website. Each of these products has involved the close participation of employers, students and school/college staff and have been rigorously piloted, tested and validated. Based on the competence framework developed with employers in the five partners countries using VQTS methodology, the project partnership has achieved in the JJC Training Programme an engaging and effective training course that has been rated very highly by staff and students. The support that the trained and certificated Job coaches provide remotely by social media to students at risk delivers benefits for all participants. Employing the Junior Job Coach methodology and to improve retention rates and the performance of work experience placements and apprenticeships will undoubtedly contribute in meeting these highly ranked VET priorities in Europe.

Today, an open public debate is as important as ever. As one of the most important elements of a healthy democracy, a public debate allows citizens to be introduced to the ideas and values of others while simultaneously sharpening their own. This public debate is gradually shifting from the physical to the digital domain. Online, however, things work differently. Many people, organizations and governments are concerned about the prevalence of fake news, hate speech, and self-enforcing echo chambers on the main online platforms. Therefore stimulating and facilitating meaningful dialogues between students on societal and moral issues is believed to be a key element of civic education, both as a form and goal.However, teachers across the European continent indicate they find it difficult to teach civic education online, and guiding discussions in particular. Moreover, several Dutch evaluations amongst students in vocational education have shown that the methods currently used in civic education are often not geared toward the experiences and interests of students, and therefore not motivating enough.That is why this project aims to develop and validate a new, evidence based digital discussion platform for civic education on a European scale that allows students from different schools across the continent to discuss important, thought-provoking European topics in a unique way: anonymous, one-on-one, and without distractions! The target group of this project are students in vocational education (MBO, or their respective equivalent) from the Netherlands, Romania, Italy, and Portugal. Studies on citizenship competences in vocational education have shown substantial lower levels amongst students in vocational tracks than amongst students in academic tracks, and less experience with discussions.

In September 2013 the European Commission published a Communique on “Opening up Education: Innovative teaching and learning for all through new Technologies and Open Educational Resources”. This paper states, that “70% of teachers in the EU recognize the importance of training in digital-supported ways of teaching and learning” but “only 20-25% of students are taught by digitally confident and supportive teachers”. Furthermore, “70% of teachers in the EU would like to have professional development on ICT skills”. The Communique proposes actions to overcome the lack of ICT in education and SOLA is designed according to these: “helping learning institutions, teachers and learners to acquire digital skills and learning methods”. All 8 partners in this project are educational institutions (either VET providers, distance learning universities or e-learning providers) from 8 different European countries. We know for fact that most of our trainers hardly if at all have the technological, pedagogical or methodological skills to work with ICT and e-learning within their classes as ICT is not yet basic part of teachers´ training. To meet nowadays requirements of the job market and the learners as well as to make education within the EU globally competitive we have decided to start “SOLA – simple open learning advancement”. One of our partners is a German authoring tool provider and distance learning content producer. This partner introduced the other institutions and its trainers to its self-developed software to enable them to produce open content while collaborating online from their workplace. Additionally to the technological the partners AHE and UDIMA gave inputs to the trainers regarding didactical, methodological, pedagogical approaches in ICT-based learning. Other goals of this extensive training are the reduction of drop-outs in online courses as well as the establishment of a long-term European-wide cooperation of VET institutions regarding the production of open content. If all educational organisations would produce resources and share those openly the e-learning workload of content development per institution could be reduced while the quality and number of topics covered can be increased. That is why all outcomes of this project (including produced contents, handbooks and manuals for trainers) are published on the project´s platform but also on http://e-bfi-ooe.at (for opening SCORM packages; User: anonym; Password: anonym123! – Demokurse: SOLA Sustainable tourism), on http://www.sola-project.eu and on http://european-research-network.eu/index.php/Initiatives/Projects an open European research network. To support development and to enable a better availability of open educational resources trainers were instructed on how to create open content. As a result training courses regarding Sustainable Tourism Basics, Rural Sustainable Tourism and Customer Relationship Management in Sustainable Tourism were produced and made available for all interested stakeholders (e.g. institutions, trainers, learners). “Connecting classrooms and developing digital devices and content” – of course the produced digital contents were tested in the classroom training settings. The attending learners were connected to the institutional “Moodle” platforms and a common use of the learning management system was established between Austria and Poland. The other partners used other LMS than “Moodle”. In long-term the outcomes shall be used within the partner institutions, in other EU-VET institutions (those were invited via several networks to participate in online presentations at the end of the project), by learners (they can run through the online materials and are able to gain common certificates so their learning-efforts are recognized or instead they can attend blended learning courses and will gain ECVET credits depending on the VET institution). “Mobilizing all stakeholders (teachers, learners, families, economic and social partners) to change the role of digital technologies at education institutions” – through SOLA teachers and learners get used to using ICT not only for training and learning but also in everyday life and for the workplace. Long-term this will result in a cycle: employers need ICT-skilled employees -> VET providers are required to offer ICT-based training -> employers get ICT-skilled and educated employees.Through the project 95 Trainers (act as Multiplier) were trained on ICT in education and 50 learners (Multiplier) were got a chance to test and improve the pedagogical approaches and the open content. A long-term goal of “Simple Open Learning Advancement” is to enable trainers to produce and work with high quality open content adapted to regional needs (e.g. language and local differences) and to contribute to European OER initiatives in producing and sharing open resources. This should result in a wider and more flexible range of distance learning options for learners.