Minutes - partnership meeting - Lahti - 24-25 September 2014

ECVET is a  formal framework to get common tools and understanding between different systems

ECVET will be put in practice at country level at the end of 2014-10-07

INTERNSHIPS

steps

• prepare
• build partnership
• before mobility
• during mobility
• after mobility

At regional level (around Lahti) 300 students per year are sent for international placements (a solid network between voc. institutions and companies has been built during 15 years). Exemple of targets: italy/japan/india for activities like jewelry/engraving, etc...

Credits = 120 (90/20/10)    o/w 10 for voluntary studies, 20 for basic (?)

N.B the language skills of  finns are impressive

funding: Leonardo grants for students mobility and/or own school funding

ECVET implementation in Finland (Maarit Saarenkilla)

Maarit Saarenkilla (from Omnia- Espoo) Omnia is an upper secundary school 10000 students.

ECVET is a major change, generally, but was easy to adopt in Finland; 13 experts spread the system.

Schedule: start in 2001, and will be implemented, fully in 2015

Practical actions

• at ministry level: adapt the legislation
• at national board level: credit points implementation
• at schools level
  • curriculum by learning outcomes, and mocules
  • structure that enables invidual pathways
  • ensure that modules are based on real working life tasks

Why did Finland invest so much?

increase the quality of qualification

recognition of prior learning

saves time for teacher, avoid double work

increases the mobility

a must when international mobility

will shortenn study time= savings

increases the transparency between schools

a source of dialog between teachers, assistants and admin

increases the mutual trust between the world of schoola and the industry

import new skills for special demand

expose Finnish students to advanced training opportunities abroad

Critical items

• the time spent in companies for coaching and assessing internships
• assessment methods must be well understood and standardized in schools and in companies
• impact on teacher salaries and working hours
• IT support
• impact of credit points on content
• teachers profiles is changing: they become more coaches than actual teachers
• impact on timetables and school planning/organization
• the teachers must catch up permanently, follow company new practices, get practical and current skills
• financing
• relationship qith ECTS: a bridge will be needed

Questions

• How are student selected to go abroad in internship
  • decision is field dependant, to get a good balance
  • the teacher makes an assessment

• Are there popular professions where ECVET is more effective?
  • no it will be used everywhere

• How do the schools build a network of company relationships (especially for the international)?
  • personal relations
  • school history
  • other option is a support group

Personal remark by Bernard Donnay (MAC-TEAM): do we notice that the role of the education institution is shifting radically: not anymore the temple of knowledge, then applied on the market, but shifting to an observation platform of what happens outside. The education institutions are now followers, not forerunners. It has a good side, but a bad side as well: risk for the students to skip the basics, to invest in fashionable skills, and loosing the necessary distance and reflection....

Andrea Madarasi-Szirmai – main professional issues of the project  tables and details later

• comparison table on the banking sector
• presentation of a mapping matrix
• Logical scheme, given the closeness of systems: 2 groups
  • Finland and Hungary
  • Estonia and Romania
• language issues
• challenge: how to convert courses to units, tasks to competencies

Miika Kuusisto – about Finland, Lahti and LUAS

Finland 5,4 million

top Pisa performers Lahti 100 k inh

notion of metropolitan area

focus on clean tech, environmental issues

design schools

The universities of applied sciences are federated

Monique Landy – about Certitude project

presentation of a project of tutor certification (EFCOCERT)

It makes sense, given the shift of responsibilities for tutors  www.efcocert.eu

Last presentation/discussion

note for the final report – details later

ECVET will be better used in cultures where internationalisation of students is pushed

idea of a data base at European level of project involving internships

resistance in some countries (fear of exposure, budget, is it sector dependant?)

dissemination: activities instead of results

timetable

• next meeting in March 2015 Estonia
• final in Budapest
• collect best practices from countries in November 2014: one page
• collect background info, ideas of issues
• national legal docs for end of October 2014
• fill missing cells in the comparison table
• May June 2015 bilateral agreements
• April strategic meeting in Brussels
• May-June Hungary
• June full report
• partners to submit a report one by one

Company visits:

RANTALEINEN GROUP

company

in the top ten,  with 330 persons

accounting + payroll services and audits

payroll much more I’l

company focus

ergonomics (company focus for employee wellness)

eager to test new tools for a better efficiency

future of accounting:

• digitilisation, even ... games (gamification)
• need for increased skills
• real competitors are engineers + IT skills, not standard accountants

trainees

• take trainees only if they are candidates to be hired, and for a long period (1 year)
• the best ones are selected while still at school
• welcome foreign trainees (Russia, Spain, Romania)
• the documentation is more and more in English

DANSKE BANK

long historical presence in Finland

10 % market share

high investment in new techs: e.g online meetings with customers, use of mobile apps

proactive care of customers

recruitment

competences and attitude more important than degree

Minutes of the students:

There are a wide range of advantages of implementing PEST project at any school level.

-       It is a great opportunity for students to get to know new cultures, company structures and working method or just to improve their language skills.

-       In Hungary it is a great advantage to have experience from another country e.g. working, studying or living in a foreign country for a while because multinational companies like employing people with foreign experience as they are considered to be more flexible, tolerant and open-minded.

-       The candidate applying for a job is expected to speak that particular language at advanced level.

On the other hand, there are some difficulties in carrying out this project.

At first students could be undermotivated for the following reasons:

1. The lack of confidence in foreign language skills.

2. Language skills of the host company:

-       Is the documentation available at the foreign language?

-       Is there any employee speaking that specific language at a confident level to teach the students?

3. The questions of housing:

-       Who provides housing for students moving abroad? (school, company or the student needs to arrange it)

4. The questions of living costs / salary:

-       Are students entitled to get payment for their work? If so, is that competitive enough to cover the costs in the country where the student moved to?

5. The type of responsibilities:

-       Would the student perform tasks related to his/her profession?

-       To what extent would the student be involved in professional projects/duties?

6. Mentoring at the host company:

-       Could the company provide the student with a company consultant helping with the thesis written by the student in the final semester of the tuition?

-       Could the company provide internal (perhaps confidential) materials (which may be necessary to write the thesis) to get an insight into?

7. Flexibility required from school:

-       Is the school flexible enough to handle the assignments required from students? e.g.: thesis draft and consultations. How could it be solved to perform all the requirements while living abroad?

8. Length of the internship:

The students are more willing to work at companies as a trainee if there is any chance to extend the length of their stay beyond the required internship period. Therefore the question is:

-       Is there any possibility to extend the internship period?

There are difficulties in applying this project in all fields of studies but we think the following fields are worth including in the internship program:

• • • IT
    • accounting programmes
    • marketing
    • management
    • controlling
    • sales
    • logistics
    • research and development

These fields are similar as the communication language is English. Students get comprehensive knowledge about these fields at school and this knowledge is easily convertible to English. These fields also have the same structures in all languages and that’s why students do not have to struggle with the national differences.

The next step could be to survey the students’ opinion about ECVET regarding:

-       Would they be interested in moving abroad for internship?

-       If not, what is the reason for that?

-       What could be the driving force to get them to participate in the project?

-       If they would like to participate, where would they travel to?
- Why would they choose a particular country? – professional reasons or personal motivations?

The companies could be interviewed as well regarding the following points:

-       Why would they choose a foreign student for a certain trainee position and not a student from their own country?

-       What would be the method of choosing the candidate/apprentice? (Would there be an integrated method applied by all companies?)

-       Why would the companies be motivated to employ a foreign student? How could we get them to be interested?

-       Who would fund the project? (EU, the company, the student, an independent organisation?)

During the conference these questions emerged relating to the project and we hope in the next stages all these questions could be answered to get a clearer picture of the whole process.

PEST - Country comparison table on ECVET – frame

Prepared by: Madarasiné Szirmai Andrea, BBS

(1) Belgium: So called apprenticeship: is a system of training a new generation of practitioners of a trade or profession with on-the-job training and often some accompanying study (classroom work and reading). Apprenticeship also enables practitioners to gain a license to practice in a regulated profession.
(2) Estonia: System of Recognition of prior learning (RPL).

PEST - Country comparison table on ECVET – concrete: Financial Institutions specialisation

 *if we have detailed information from Belgium we try to involve them into the comparison.

PEST - Country comparison table on ECVET – concrete: Financial Institutions specialisation - COMPETENCIES

UNIFIED version