Unemployment, particularly youth unemployment, is one of the greatest challenges of contemporary Europe in a constantly changing labor market: often young graduates lack the skills needed to face the World of Work, such as the capacity for initiative, working in groups, creative thinking, problem solving, adaptability, flexibility: in a word entrepreneurship, one of the 8 key competences that also the "Agenda for Competences for Europe" ("A New Skills Agenda for Europe "COM 2016 381/12) indicates as a strategic and fundamental mind-set for improving the employability, competitiveness and growth of European citizens. The project intends to: - improve and expand the range of learning and entrepreneurial education opportunities offered by the five technical-economic partner schools of five different countries, Italy, Austria, Spain, Croatia and Macedonia; - support the development of basic and transversal skills of the learners of their vocational training, ie oriented towards the world of work, - support enhancement and systemization actions of open and innovative teaching methods, - improve the quality, innovation and internationalization of school education through transnational cooperation between the 5 partner schools. The main activity will be an exchange of good practices between the five schools, to be implemented through n. 5 "short-term exchange of group of pupils" that is one in each partner country: each school will select n. 24 students taking part in n. 4 short-term exchange of group of pupils in partner countries accompanied by n. 2 teachers: a total of 120 students and 40 teachers will be involved in mobility activities in 5 different flows towards the 5 different countries of the project. During the exchanges, the partner schools will be able to show and comment each of the good practices in teaching / learning entrepreneurship understood as a mind-set that supports the newly graduated student to face the world of work with more and better skills. In addition, thanks to exchanges, students and teachers will have the opportunity to develop their language skills related to the language of the host country and English, as a target language, and to develop transversal skills, such as the ability to relate and compare in a different cultural and social context, resourcefulness and the ability to adapt to various situations, intercultural awareness and European citizenship. The exchanges will mainly focus on the practice of SimulImpresa (in English Virtual Business) as a tool to educate entrepreneurship by bringing students closer to the business world through the simulation of entrepreneurial activities such as marketing, human resource management, purchases and sales , etc; during the exchanges there will be company visits and seminars / workshops involving the participation of exponents from the World of Work, in particular local businesses, and experts in entrepreneurship and communication education. The good practices shown and observed during the exchanges will be collected in a "Toolkit for Entrepreneurship Education" which also contains the premises of the project (needs, priorities, objectives) as well as guidelines for teachers on the teaching methods to be used in the Virtual Business labs. The Toolkit will be written in English and translated, thanks also to the help of the students who participated in the exchange, in the various languages of the partnership; it will be a useful tool for the teachers and students of the EVB project as a reminder of the activities carried out, and for other European teachers who in the future will want to start a path of entrepreneurship education in their own school. In parallel with student exchanges, there will be local activities of SimulImpresa and activities of the eTwinning project that will continue until June 2020. Transversal activities of dissemination and exploitation of the project results are planned: a Facebook page and a Blog will be created in which all the audio-visual materials of the project activities, the Toolkit, the presentations of the schools, the exchanges and all the material produced during the life of the project will be published; on the eTwinning platform the five partner schools will convey all the project outputs as well as create a virtual space for comments and feedback on the activities already implemented and to be carried out. There are also plans to monitor and assess the impact of the project. The partners will work together also thanks to Technical Project Meetings that will be organized with Skype call and during the exchange; the meetings will be functional to the coordination and planning of the activities to be carried out.
CONTEXT The XXI Century School has the task of educating young citizens and providing them with those useful and indispensable skills for the transition from the school world to the job world at European and international level. In this context, the Erasmus + projects and especially those for the exchange of good practices, the experience of the EVB - European Virtual Business project represented for the five partner schools a precious opportunity to learn best practices for education at European level. Entrepreneurship, understood as a set of personal skills and as a mind-set to deal with the inclusion of the young new graduate in the world of work. TARGETS The five schools of the EVB partnership have similar fields of study, as they all have the technical-economic sector and classes of students of similar age (14 to 18 years). Sharing of the school curriculum facilitated the identification of the project objectives which, despite the halt suffered by the project activities due to the the Covid-19 pandemic, remained unchanged; The objectives were: - improving the quality, innovation and internationalization of school education and training through transnational cooperation - the dissemination and systemization of open and innovative teaching methods - the development of professional skills of schools teachers directly and indirectly involved in the project through the promotion of the culture of lifelong and continuous training - the permeability between the different sectors of education and training - the development of basic and transversal skills of learners on entrepreneurship education and foreign languages ACTIVITY' The achievement of these objectives required a working plan with responsibilities and tasks shared between the various project partners regarding the main project activities which were mainly of three types: - Promotion, dissemination and enhancement of project activities and results: this was an activity transversal to the various partners and the various project phases and was carried out mainly at local level - Organization of physical and virtual exchanges: as mentioned, the project stopped after the first exchange organized in Italy in November 2019. As a consequence the second exchange, scheduled for March 2020, was then organized only 18 months later in a virtual way; of the remaining three exchanges, one was held in blended mode, because some partners participated physically and others virtually, and the other two exchanges were only virtually created - Monitoring of project activities by the coordinator and impact assessment: this activity was also transversal to the various project phases and involved all partners in virtual meetings every six months or so RESULTS The most important results were: 1) Creation of a project logo and promotional brochures and depliants 2) Organization of the project's info day at each school 3) N. 5 exchange of group of pupils, of which 1 only physical, 1 blended and 3 virtual 4) Creation of project social blog, eTwining version of the project, and several web pages on the sites of the partner schools 5) Collection of good practices in entrepreneurship education: during the exchanges the partners were able to exchange their best practices on this topic and on innovative methodologies from "learning by doing" to "cooperative learning", choosing an interdisciplinary approach of various disciplines involved from time to time in the various exchanges. LONG-TERM EXPECTED BENEFITS EVB was the first European-level project for our school, the all-encompassing G. Spataro by Gissi: thanks to this first and demanding experience, we have seen a prospect of Europeanisation of the training offer that is actually feasible open up. An Erasmus + team was set up in the Institute. They took care of the design and implementation and reporting of project activities, acquiring fundamental skills for the development of future projects at European and international level, also in collaboration with local stakeholders. The goal of creating a European learning space for all five schools in the partnership, after the experience of EVB, appears more easily achievable.