Professional drivers must achieve a safer, more efficient and environmentally friendly public transport in increasingly complex working conditions. EU countries are in great demand for skilled and educated professional drivers-it is estimated that the EU currently lacks about 150 thousand (IRU – World Road Transport Organization). Although the lack of trained drivers is more pronounced in countries without regular secondary education for this profession, it is also present in other countries confronted with insufficient interest for enrollment or to remain in the profession after regular education. The overall objective of the project is to strengthen the connection of vocational education in the transport and logistics sector with the labor market and to ensure quality education in the occupation of motor vehicle driver through the transfer and dissemination of knowledge, skills and good practice among European Vocational schools. The specific objective is to develop a sustainable partnership for the establishment and further development of national, regional and sectoral skills competition institutions as a way to increase attractiveness and excellence of vocational education and training for motor vehicle driver profession. As a long-term measure, contributing to the improvement and development of quality of this educational programme, the partners will develop a system of experience and knowledge exchange of students in the form of competitions taking place once a year. The competition would initially allow the transfer of knowledge, exchange of experience, enforcement of excellence and cooperation of all partner schools, which would potentially spread to other interested schools in Europe in the future. The project connects the EU vocational schools from the sector of transport and logistics that educate students for the occupation of motor vehicle drivers. The project holder is Škola za cestovni promet from Zagreb (Croatia) and partners Kouvola Region Vocational College KSAO (Finland), Saobraćajno tehnička škola from Zemun (Serbia) and Lycée des métiers Maréchal Leclerc de Hauteclocque from Saint Jean de la Ruelle (France). The project will last 27 months. In the first phase of the project, each partner school will organize a professional training for teachers from other partner schools in one of the areas in the transport process. The aim of the training is to strengthen the connection of vocational education and the labor market, promoting work based learning to help transition from school to work. The business people will be included in the implementation of the training. In the second year of the project, the partners will organize a skills and knowledge competition for students educated for the motor vehicle drivers. The main goal of the competition is to acquire the modern competencies of motor vehicle drivers, characterized by safety, integrity and culture of motor vehicle management. With the competition, we want to popularize the driving profession and develop positive attitudes towards this profession. For the purposes of learning different areas in the transport process, partners will develop a web interface based on the exchange of knowledge and experience through a closed network of users-the INTRANET, which will expand after the project’s completion depending on the number of schools interested in accessing the network. The Intranet will contain current data, teaching materials in the field of transport, video content, interesting information, as well as various other interesting points about transport in road traffic. This approach, in which a limited number of users communicate and exchange information, will allow the improvement of the curriculum, and the created teaching materials and contents will be included in regular classes and used to perform lessons from different vocational school subjects. Students from the partner schools included in the project will acquire additional knowledge and skills through both the project activities and the competition system and they will be further motivated to work as drivers after graduation. Dissemination activities aimed at primary school pupils and unemployed will further promote vocational education for this profession. The project will have an impact on teachers and staff from partner institutions that will improve their professional competences. Teachers will be further trained to mentor students in skills competitions at local, national and EU level. The project will allow educational institutions to follow contemporary trends in the profession easily and to transfer this knowledge more qualitatively, with the help of modern technology, on to their students. Finally, all project activities are ultimately focused on the economy, as the project will enable students to enter the labor market more readily and easily, better education for the motor vehicle drivers’ profession and greater interest of motivated future students for it.
Through the project implementation, we wanted to exchange knowledge and ideas on implementing competition in the Motor vehicle driver educational program. Each partner school has transferred their knowledge, experience and expertise to other partners through the good practice examples. We wanted to come up with a skills competitions as a way of increasing attractiveness and excellence of vocational education and training for the motor vehicle driver profession, so the students could present their knowledge and skills in areas covered by educations in partner schools. Teachers created virtual tasks which were realized and solved by the partner schools' students, and which contained simulated real work tasks related to cargo transport and based on the modern logistics flows of cargo. All the interested can find the materials and tasks available on the webpage. In addition to this, we wanted to provide partner schools with the equippment and devices for cargo manipulation, as well as computer program for logistics processes simulation, crucial for teaching and training needs, but also for the competition implementation.
Through this project we wanted to strengthen the connection between vocational logistics and traffic education and the labor market, as well as ensure quality education in the motor vehicle driver profession through transfer and dissemination of knowledge and skills acquired through good practice and education among European vocational schools. The aim was to develop sustainable partnership for the establishment and further development of national, regional and sectoral institutions in skills competitions as a way of incresing attractiveness and excellence of vocational education and training in the motor vehicle driver profession. Seeing it as a long-term measure which would contribute to improving and increasing quality in this educational program, we wanted to come up with a system of students experience and knowledge exchange in the form of a competition held once a year. The competition would start by providing knowledge transfer, experience exchange, and promoting excellence and cooperation among all partner schools, which could potentially spread in future to other interested European schools.