This project has been set up by the collaboration of five institutions: the Association Ouvrière des Compagnons du Devoir du Tour de France and the Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers (France), Handwerkskammer zu Köln (Germany), Erhvervsakademiet Lillebaelt (Denmark) and Borgund Vidaregåande Skole (Norway). After a long tradition of Vocational Education and Training (VET) and of collaboration on European mobility, these institutions are beginning to offer tertiary courses to trainees for whom access to Higher Education is problematic. These new Professional courses are designed to include and highlight the excellence of VET provision. However these initiatives are still limited and at national level only and they need better recognition in Europe and with employers. This collaboration aims to develop a Europe-wide Professional Bachelor Degree with two specialist pathways in Construction Management and Mechatronics Management. This will be open to VET trainees with EQF Level 3 or equivalent and accredited in the four European countries. In line with the Europe 2020 strategy, the programme offers advanced technical and vocational skills and competences and it develops high levels of linguistic, cross-cultural and transversal skills to meet the demands of our knowledge-based economy. The project designs a three year programme up to EQF Level 6, with a common core of business and management and two specialist pathways in Construction and in Mechatronics, these being extended to other areas at a later stage. This is a truly professional degree, integrating assessed work experience in the academic programme as well as practical and professional activities in the academic study. It is a Europe-wide degree as all teaching and assessment is conducted in English and as it requires students to follow each year of the course in a different country. This structure will develop high levels of linguistic skills in English plus linguistic skills in three foreign European languages . It will also develop strong inter-cultural skills as students are recruited from the partner institutions to form an international cohort which may be taught in some instances along with home students and will be integrated into work teams in local companies in different countries. The project partners will base the design of the course on their joint experience at VET and HE level and on similar European initiatives. They will define the content and the structure of the Professional Bachelor degree to take into account the knowledge gaps that VET students encounter in HE and the high demands made by the course transnational mobility requirement, particularly in terms of linguistic and cross- cultural preparation. The course will carry 180 ECTS credits to be completed at EQF Levels 4, 5 and 6 and will be accredited in the partner countries. The use of ECTS credits, European Learning agreements, Transcripts of records, the Diploma Supplement and the CEF levels for Languages will ensure transparency and recognition at European level. The partners will set up sound academic, professional and pastoral structures to support and monitor their students during their study and work , abroad and at home. The project intends to recruit a maximum of 3 students per institution to pilot EQF Level 4 of the course in September 2016 with the pathway in Construction Management.The project will review and adapt this pilot before recruiting a cohort of 6 students per partner to start EQF Level 4 in September 2017 with both pathways available. The partners will prepare a number of documents to inform current and past VET students, employers and other stakeholders about the programme. Brief details of the course in the local languages will appear in the literature and website of each institution as well as more detailed course documentation in English. The project intends to end with an international conference held in Paris to present its results to a wider audience. The project expects the Professional Bachelor degree to have great benefits for its students and their employability by ensuring their personal and professional development to include advanced technical skills combined with managerial, linguistic and cross-cultural skills. It will also give them access to higher degrees. It will enhance the status and attractiveness of the partner institutions by widening their tertiary provision and bridging the divide between VET and HE. It will benefit employers by providing a high quality work-force able to meet the challenges that Europe faces. The partners intend to continue offering this programme beyond the end of the project by widening the course to new specialist pathways, by including a greater number of partner countries and by securing additional sources of funding for the institutions and for the students.
The Association Ouvrière des Compagnons du Devoir et du Tour de France has developed a long-standing approach to vocational education and training with an original approach. This approach is based on a job alternation system that fosters strong in-company presence combined to geographic mobility, which leads young trainees to experience a work placement in various companies, in France and abroad. This mobility experience has proved a truly efficient training system as it allows for the transmission of knowledge and the development of professional experience in various environments. The institution pledges to maintain such a system. However, the digital revolution has led to a considerable evolution in the manufacturing processes, the operating procedures and in the services expected to be rendered for each trade. Some changes are also required in order to successfully achieve the energy transition. New skills are expected from the women and men in each trade. On top of the technical skills required, new technological and scientific knowledge are now needed for an effective on-the-job performance. To be successful, these professionals now need to be provided with higher education pathways allowing them to acquire this new knowledge. However, access to higher education today is almost impossible for someone who hasn't followed a classical educational program. The challenge of this project is to build a higher education pathway leading to an officially recognized diploma at Bachelor level (EQF level 6) for the students having undergone a technical/vocational training (which is the pathway often followed due to academic underachievement), while maintaining the principles that led those students to re-engage with the desire to learn: work-study and mobility. As we are not yet able to implement such a pathway for all the trades, we have chosen 2 professional areas to implement an approach transferable to other trades: the building trades and mechatronics engineering. We had to harness partners with a knowledge of these career paths, the technical knowledge involved and the audience this higher education pathway targets, as well as partners from higher education bodies able to provide scientific knowledge and to offer a formal validation of the training. We have selected the following professional training centers: Les Compagnons du Devoir (project handler - France), Handwerkskammer zu Köln (Germany), Borgund Vidaregåande Skole (Norway) and some higher education institutes: le Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers (France) and the Erhvervsakademiet Lillebaelt Institute (Denmark). These partners were also known by the project handler due to their participation to other European programs, expect for the Erhvervsakademiet Lillebaelt Institute. To meet the project's objectives, the partners had to: elaborate the content of the higher education programs, build the training pathways for the students entering the scheme, define the profiles and the eligibility criteria for admission, agree upon the process of recognition and validation of the formal qualifications, implement bridging and support courses and, when appropriate, establish accommodation capacities in the various partnering countries and ensure the diffusion of the educational outcomes. Based on the work undertaken by the various workgroups in charge of these actions, some outcomes have been achieved. The content of the three years' training was developed and validated by the partners in the building trade area. These results are not yet achieved for the mechatronics engineering area. A standardized educational pathway was elaborated, and training contents were assigned between the various partners. This pathway is transferable to other trades. The process of validation and the mutual recognition of the training achievements were recorded. This allows for the recognition of formal qualifications awarded by universities. The experience which was implemented simultaneously to the engineering works helped identify the areas in need of bridging courses (in English and for some professional software) and to gauge the interest of a higher education pathway targeting a professional audience with a technical training background. Accommodation capacities have been outlined in the various countries. The diffusion of educational outcomes has not been implemented yet, but it was tested by the partners. To date, 2 French students are enrolled in the program and 5 Danish students have expressed their interest in joining it and in spending their last year in France. The project handler intends to step up this action by transferring the methodology developed in this program to other trades, with other European partners.