In a financial climate where the job markets and industries are liable to fluctuating demands, it is a reality that many students lack knowledge about education and job opportunities outside their own country and region and what skills are required. As a result, they often miss the self confidence to even consider studying or working in another part of Europe and many feel trapped in their own regions. Observing changes in Europe, especially in higher education and the socio-cultural environment, 'Getting Equipped for Europe' aims to provide middle and upper-secondary students from six European schools (Bulgaria, Greece, Italy, Norway, Slovakia and Spain) with the skills to equip them for a possible future in another European country, whether as higher education students or in the job market. All schools will join the LTTs with 3 or 4 students aged 15-19 and 2 teachers. They will be selected by taking into consideration motivation, academic performance, language and interpersonal skills , participation into project activities. All students including gifted students and those from disadvantaged families will be eligible and eventually supported both during the management and development of the project. Activities will include information about the educational system in the participating countries; careers advice; experience taking part in and holding workshops; interview training both in educational and work-place settings; learning specific ICT and language skills; building cultural awareness, learning how to present themselves and training these skills, communication and personal skills. All of the activities will build English and other foreign language skills and challenge students’ inter-cultural competency. Different instructional strategies based on a collaborative and participative methodology will be put into practice with students at the centre of the teaching-learning process. Activities will have an integrating dimension; students will be able to analyse, compare and contrast different European education and employment contexts in their fields of interest. Students will have to carry out scheduled scaffolding activities previous to each mobility. During them they will interact as teams in workshops, debates or oral presentations to bring about the expected outcomes in the different areas they will be learning from. Students will gain experience about the challenges and the advantages of the European work and education markets that cannot be achieved from home. They will widen their perspectives on collaborative work and on sharing knowledge with partners who can become their future university or job partners. Students will improve their English language skills and they will learn basic survival language for each of the countries. Thus, they will extend their own skill set, share their own language and appreciate, to a greater extent, the linguistic challenges of moving to a new country and the role of language skills for integration. The aim of the project is to give students skills to equip them for the European work and education market using their right to mobility within the EU. In the long term this knowledge and skills can lead to more young people being willing to consider the wider European markets, taking advantage of the possibilities available.
The first activity that the students carried out, was to answer a pre-project questionnaire on the topics that they were going to deal with in the following two school years. Their answers mainly showed their lack of knowledge about education and job opportunities outside their own countries. In addition, the questionnaire made evident that they missed the self-confidence and enthusiasm to even consider studying or working in other parts of Europe that were not their home towns. The partner schools had already agreed on a set of six issues or topics on which activities and final products would focus. The work on those topics has aimed at providing the students with the necessary tools that will allow them to be ready for a possible future in another European country whether in a university or in the job market.The selection process of students has been designed in order to give a wide variety of students the chance of participating in this European learning experience. Communication in English is key, so participants have to show the necessary linguistic skills to make oral and written interaction possible in every task and also in every social encounter with host students and their families. The students have been selected by taking into consideration their intrinsic motivation to face new challenge, positive attitude and open-mindedness towards other lifestyles. Besides, more closely connected with the characteristic of the work to be undertaken, interpersonal skills, commitment to the project goals, reliability and sense of responsibility were also pondered. Various assessment tools have been used in the partner schools to finally come up with the selected group of Erasmus+ students . The students coming from poor and deprived families have been given the chance of joining the LTTs and take an active role in cultural visits abroad, often the only chance they have had of living abroad for plenty of them. All schools have joined the mobilities with 2 or 3 teachers and 4 students, 3 only in Norway, as considering the higher costs, it has been planned with fewer students. All the students were aged between 15 and 19, and they would be matched with their host partners according to their age and, when required, to their gender.The topics chosen by the partner schools are shown in the name given to each mobility: “Getting into Europe”, “Getting Motivated”, “Getting into Purposeful English”, “Getting Set for Introductions”, “Getting Culturally Aware”, and “Getting Digital”. According to the elaboration of each topic, the main activities carried out were centered at : providing information about the educational systems in the participating countries; improvement of communication, personal skills, and self-motivation; career counselling and meetings with advisors; workshops with experts from universities and local companies; preparation of interviews with both university students and professionals; workshops on language-awareness skills; tasks on building cultural awareness; learning how to present themselves; and consolidation of ICT competence. Students have worked in groups for the preparation of activities before each mobility, then the different products have been presented to the local audiences in English and, at the end of each mobility, they have continued to work in teams to produce the final output expected after each mobility. In this sense, they have experienced the linguistic challenges of moving to a new country and of integrating into a different lifestyle at home, with the host students and their families; and also, in the dynamics of every partner’s school. The aim of the project, notwithstanding the spread of the pandemic in its final stage, from March 2020 on, has been to give students the skills to be equipped for European universities and job markets, getting to know about the great options provided by the mobilities within the European Union. Students have gained experience about the challenges and the advantages of the European work and university system that could not have been achieved from home.Due to the pandemic circumstances, the contents and aim of the last mobility, the consolidation of IT competence, had to be reached online, during the year of extension of the project. In this way, the Italian school, acting as the host school, scheduled online tutorials to revise, with guest students and teachers from home, the IT contents provided in advance. Finally, the applying students would take a final test to get the certification on IT Essentials.In the long term, all the skills and knowledge acquired through the development of the project, collected in all the varied tasks and final products, can be passed by students and teachers to more young people willing to travel outside their home countries, sharing knowledge with their European partners that, one day, could become their future university mates or job colleagues.