2nd transnational meeting of the Early School Workers in Brescia

The 2^nd transnational meeting of the Early School Workers Erasmus + was held on the 8^th of May in Brescia, Italy. The project aims at supporting the renovation of VET systems in Europe with the ultimate goal of tracking Early School Learning and increasing the employability of youngsters while fostering their active role in society.

More specifically, we focused on the transferability model, where from the model we will start to create a model of the UTC schools, including organisational, pedagogical and didactic variables that can be transferred to all contexts. The WP’s focuses on UK University Technical Colleges (UTCs) of their school-based enterprise experience.  The methodology of Guidelines for a set of recommendations and practical indications that represent a consensus of a scientific community are:

• Differentiate the school space
• To encourage change, we need to reconsider the organisation of the school space, providing for more types of settings
• Technological equipment is compliant with the company’s needs.

EfVET presented the main dissemination activities of the project. In this respect, EfVET created the dissemination and communication strategy plan, set up the ESW Facebook page, helped to created awareness among different stakeholders about the when it comes to the next steps, EfVET will keep producing next newsletter s for the ESW project, and website.

On the second day, the consensus conference was organised by ENAC. The conference explored the new identity of VET centres lies at the intersection between school and work, as several international and national experiences show. This Consensus Conference represents an important moment to read, discuss and validate the UICs Transferability Guidelines with the support of experts and relevant stakeholders.

Different international and national experiences indicate the new identity of the training centres in the interweaving between school and work: an amphibious identity, so to speak, which embraces and unifies both the needs of learning and those of progressive employment. The Erasmus + project “ESW – EARLY SCHOOL WORKERS” (2018-1-IT01-KA202-006754) is confronted with significant experience, that of the UTC (University Technical College), to try to outline a transferable model of training enterprise, through the detail, in the form of Guidelines, of its constituent elements. The 9 May event represents a consensus conference, through which the Guidelines on the Training Enterprise will be read, analysed and integrated through the contribution of stakeholders and industry experts.

Once the first project output has been validated, the model of the British UTCs will be analysed and adapted to the Italian, Spanish and German context. The idea is to transfer the English model to training realities in other countries to combat the training gap and early school leaving, reinforcing the key and technical-professional skills of the young people who attend VET courses.

The consensus conference was divided into two parts:

• during the morning the ESW project and the UK UTC model were presented; Italian education and training experts intervened to discuss the evolution of organizational models in the FP
• In the afternoon the participants worked in thematic workshops to discuss in detail and validate the guidelines on the transferability model of the UK UTCs.

The workshops were as follows

Times, spaces and methods of grouping (moderators Emanuele Serrelli and Luca Calligaro)

• In this workshop, we will discuss how UTCs organize school time and learning spaces and how they form and manage class groups. Some practical indications will be validated to replicate the experience in other contexts.

Staff and organizational model (moderators Alessia Romito, Alfonso Rubinacci and Federico Carollo)

• Hiring staff with the right characteristics and setting up an organizational model is essential to create a favourable learning environment for children. The working group will focus on the variables that characterize the English context and on what can be borrowed from this experience.

The curriculum and the PBL method (moderators Roberto Franchini and Nicoli)

• The workgroup will have the purpose of discussing how to create a curriculum that integrates professional and socio-emotional skills as well as identifying the fundamental variables to replicate teaching models based on ‘learning by doing’, more specifically Project Based Learning.

Evaluation (moderators Arduino Salatin and Elisa Bara)

•  The evaluation workshop will focus on how to organize an efficient learning assessment model that takes into consideration hard and soft skills as well as experiences outside the school context (alternation, etc.), and that take on the characteristics of an evaluation formative ‘that is really useful to those who receive it.