The recent ‘refugee crisis’ is a challenge for European countries. The integration of the refugees who are eligible to stay is one goal of the European refugee policy. One of the promising factors for successful integration is the Vocational Education and Training (VET). On the practitioner level, various measures have been taken to integrate refugees through VET, but the exchange of information and experiences between the actors barely exists. Usually, different practitioners are confronted with similar challenges, but since they act independently to share knowledge that allows learning through others’ experience is difficult. In the present project „Indicators of Good VET practice for refugees“, experiences made by practitioners in four European countries (Italy, Denmark, Austria and Germany) are made available and are evaluated. By means of these experiences, the project aims to generate quality indicators for successful training programmes in the field of VET. Hard and soft indicators which support the integration of refugees will be revealed. These indicators will be transformed into a web-based analyse-tool. This tool will be available at the national and international project homepages and helps practitioners to analyse their own VET programmes for the integration of refugees. The application of the analyse-tool will be documented online by 20 best-practice-examples, which will be selected out of 120 VET programmes for the integration of refugees in the four participating countries. The 20 best-practice-examples will be presented for the public, especially for VET providers. At the same time application-oriented manuals for a qualitative conception of VET programme to integrate refugees are designed and online available. It helps to avoid repeating mistakes. Target groups which will benefit from the results are, at one hand, practitioners who organise and implement the VET measures (public and private VET providers, companies from different sectors). The examples of best-practice as well as the information and manuals available on the project website facilitate the co-operation between institutions and refugees. The refugees will benefit from this project, because the intellectual Outputs of this project enable a sustainable integration of refugees. At the other hand, the project generates results that will help to take decisions concerning education policy. As data and findings about the quality of measures taken to integrate refugees through VET are missing so far, the findings of the project are relevant for education and refugee policy. The focus of the project explains the selection of partner organisation as well. The partner organisations are not involved directly in integration measures at the practitioner level and are possible to evaluate the activities at the practitioner level more objective. Due to their research expertise they are able to generate evidence-based project results. The partner organisations are consulted by practice experts, who are involved in the coordination of integration activities or who are responsible for integration measures. All products of this project will be available on the project website and free of charge. The results will be presented at multiplier events and by wide distribution campaign. Due to the ongoing offer to analyse VET programmes by the analyse-tool even after the end of this project and due to the option to make further VET programmes public as best-practices, the sustainability of the project is already put in integrative.
The integration of a large number of refugees remains an important task and a major challenge for the EU countries, which are involved. Sustainable integration into the host society is generally preceded by integration into the world of work. This is also one of the reasons why vocational education and training (VET) is given a central key role. At the practical level, numerous integration measures have already been launched through VET since 2015. However, synergy effects through the exchange of experience between actors have rarely been achieved, as the practitioners rarely had common points of contact. Against this background, this project "Indicators of good VET practice for refugees" (GoodVET) aims to make these practical experiences accessible. For this purpose, experiences from the four partner countries Italy, Austria, Denmark and Germany were analysed and aggregated. In order to achieve this goal, quality indicators for the successful integration of refugees into VET were first generated on the basis of a theoretical analysis and successively applied to practical examples. As a result, the previously generated quality indicators were optimised and adapted according to practical conformity. From this analysis, both core indicators and optional indicators were filtered out, consisting of a mix of hard and soft factors and collected in a supranational handbook. The core indicators were also transferred to an online-based analysis tool, which is freely accessible on all national and the international project homepage. Interested users are given the opportunity to review existing or future vocational integration activity with regard to quality. The analysis tool was applied to a total of 120 programmes for the integration of refugees through vocational training from all four partner countries and 20 best practice examples were filtered out of this total. These identified best-practice examples were elaborated for publication as application-oriented guidelines for a high-quality design of vocational training programmes for refugees. Here the impact of the synergy effects is primarily pursued. The primary and direct target group of GoodVET are practitioners who are actively involved in the conception and implementation of vocational activities for the integration of refugees. This includes both, state and private educational institutions, as well as participating companies. The project results of the supranational manual with all generated quality indicators, the structured description of the best practice examples as well as the analysis tool should optimize the programmes for refugees and thus avoid mistakes. This optimisation will also benefit all refugees who participate in these programmes, as increased quality contributes to a more sustainable integration into the labour market. Furthermore, more targeted decisions can be made on the basis of the assured quality results at education policy level. As neutral outsiders, the project partners were able to evaluate the theoretical and practical approaches in a completely unbiased and evidence-based manner. However, in order to be able to guarantee practical suitability at the same time, the project partners were supported by practical experts who themselves are active in the coordination of vocational training programme for refugee integration. The release and permanent publication of the project results on the project homepages as well as the ongoing possibility of having vocational training projects analysed by the analysis tool ensure the long-term sustainability of the project.