Author: bgarate

This week the EuskoSkills competition is taking place in the Basque Country. With the aim to pursue excellence in vocational education, this kind of competitions take place in the national and international level in different skills areas (hairdressing, construction, cooking, mechatronics, industrial design…). HETEL does not stand aside of this reality and since October 2019 is involved in an Eramus+ KA2 project where colleges from Finland, Scotland, Northern Ireland, and the Netherlands exchange their good practices in the organization and preparation of teachers and students for skills competitions. Precisely, this very same week, the project partners met in the college Salesianos Deusto, in Bilbao, to work in the programme of a competition which will take place in January in the Netherlands, involving teachers and students from mechatronics, cooking and business. Although not so popular yet as in the rest of the countries in the consortium, HETEL is committed to involve more of its associated schools in skills competitions. Because it´s not about the competition, it´s about being excellent in what you do. More information about the project: https://sites.google.com/view/skillscompetitionproject/home  

In the whole EU, only around 3-5% of VET students have the opportunity to participate in international mobility through the Erasmus+ Programme. This raises the question, what happens with the rest, with the vast majority of VET students? They don´t have the possibility to develop international competences. As the mission of VET colleges is to offer an integral education, which includes citizenship and global competences, to all students, the partners in the co-funded Erasmus+ project “Build @ Home” are working to produce tools and resources for VET teachers so they will be able to embed these competences in the regular VET curriculum. Last week, HETEL international and a teacher from Zulaibar Arratiako Lanbide Ikastegia, joined the project meeting in Denmark to start working in the definition and selection of international competences and the possible tools to train them. In the upcoming months, we will go on with this work, don´t miss our progress following HETEL´s website and social networks!

The INTENT project is an Erasmus+ funded project coordinated by the Department of Vocational Education of the German region North-Westphalia where HETEL participates as a partner. The project tries to build a comprehensive approach to vocational education, promoting interdisciplinary cooperation among VET programmes in line with organizational models 4.0, where supply chains follow an interconnected structure, with more flexibility and shorter response times to the market demands. Along 5 days of training, a group of teachers from Italy, Germany, Czech Republic, Portugal and the Basque Country are learning how to develop interdisciplinary materials based on the ones already developed by the project partners. 3 teachers from HETEL´s schools participate in the training: Antonio Pinillos (Sopeña Bilbao), Maider Lizarralde (La Salle Berrozpe) and Asier Merino (Zulaibar).

Dual Ecosystems is an Erasmus+ KA2 project coordinated by ENGIM Lombardia (Italy) with the purpose to exchange good practices in the co-design and co-delivery of vocational education by companies and VET colleges. Through different study visits, we will learn how different education organizations in different countries (Germany, Italy, Basque Country and Northern Ireland) cooperate with their socioeconomic ecosystem in order to improve the quality of VET provision. After on-line visits organised by our partners in Italy, it was the turn of the Basque Country. Maristak and HETEL organised a virtual tour through Maristak College and shared with the partners our experience in co-designing and co-delivering specialization programmes in robotics and cybersecurity, explaining the process we followed, the learning methodology we use, and the perspective of companies and students on the positive impact of these kind of training programmes.

HETEL launched a competition among its associated VET schools to design the logo for the Erasmus+ project Dual ECOsystems. This project aims to identify local successful practices on the delivery of Dual training programs that could be exchangeable among the partners to evaluate the transferability of each good practice at a larger scale for the success of all (student/worker, companies, VET institutions). The partners for this European project are ENGIM Lombardia (IT); Confartigianato Imprese Bergamo (IT); Universita´ DEGLI Studi di Bergamo (IT); Universitate Bremen (DE); Maristak – Durango (ES); Belfast Metropolitan College (UK); and HETEL. In the first place, we want to thank the participation of all our schools and to recognise the high quality of the received proposals. In the second place, we congratulate Nerea Arroyo, student in Mondragon Goi Eskola Politeknikoa, for winning the competition. Congratulations!