The goals of our programme were as follows: - More European dimension (staff and students) - by exposing both students and staff to an international experience, we are hoping to improve global awareness which historically our students and staff have not been exposed to as they do not travel abroad much for holidays or other reasons. - New teaching methods or tools (staff) - by doing job shadowing and internships abroad, we are looking to improve our teaching methods and learn new methods. - Better language skills (students) - students often struggle to obtain the requested level of foreign language competences. Doing an internship abroad gives them more chance to improve their language skills in a fun way in order to meet the required level. • Social inclusion (students) - a large part of the subsidies will be used to fund an exchange visit with a school in Croatia. This is an annual trip which we do with our level 2 students who have usually had no or very little experience with travelling and are also not usually motivated to move outside their comfort zone. This is a focal group of our school, as our labour population has a high rnumbers of employees or unemployed people without any form of qualification.
We applied for the Erasmus+ programme in order to subsidise our international mobilities for students and staff at ROC Rivor. As ROC Rivor is located in a poor and lowly educated area of the Netherlands, neither student not staff are well connected internationally. After starting the international programme at ROC Rivor 6 years ago, we are keen to give students and staff the opportunity to do internships abroad in order to improve their personal and professional skills and competences, improve their European/global awareness/knowledge and also to improve their language skills which are often lacking behind. This programme is also aimed at closing the gap between students and staff from other schools, which have more international exposure, not only to compete at school level but especially to provide our students with equal opportunities in the labour market.