We sent about 16 pupils (per year) from the 7th year of technical and vocational training of the departments of wood, car, electricity and ICT for a period of 3 weeks to Spain and Finland to do international internships. We wanted to achieve the following output (short and long term) * improving considerably their knowledge of foreign languages * increasing their independence and autonomy * expanding their cultural horizon * formal and non formal learning * getting work experience in another place than school * increasing their job opportunities * taking more self initiative * more awareness of the differences/similarities between the European (work) cultures + social competences like citizenship, respect for all ...(=>better understanding and bigger respect) * motivating students of understanding the importance of doing internships * increasing their ICT skills by creating and maintaining a blog (also other social media) * pupils live on their own and do a personal budget control (=ideal preparation for afterwards.) * improving attitudes, skills (e.g. work attitude, how to deal with other nationalities). * more tolerance of the pupils * to reduce the number of drop-out students
Hast is a secondary school (technical industry) in Hasselt (Limburg) . The unique variety of departments in our school gives (after graduation) better opportunities to the labour market and higher education. Because of the changing educational landscape we realized that we also had to adapt in our school, not only in the field of teaching but also in our internships. Since many years most students of the third grade do their internship in their own region, but we realized that a lot of topics are not dealt with during this training such as: * how to manage in a foreign language * lack of independence * differences in work culture * foreign work experience (which increases your job opportunities) * how to deal with colleagues with a different nationality * how to learn something from foreign colleagues on the workfloor (and they from me) There were (are) also some specific needs * ICT and electricity: in own region no opportunity to work with domotics KNX. * Wood: abroad, more opportunity to do the real craftwork * Car: bigger opportunities to develop their abilities in the department of bodywork of the car. A solution for these needs could not be found in Flanders, therefore we wanted to go international.