With the project, we wanted to achieve a four-week vocational education for the students in educational environments where they perform the apprenticeship forms of education. For the teachers, we wanted to achieve a one-week professional training and the acquisition of teaching experience in foreign schools, especially in the apprenticeship educational programs. The purpose of the training abroad was to increase the motivation and the interest of the young people for the apprenticeship, modeled on foreign examples of good practices, while also providing such new competences, knowledge and skills that will help them meet the challenges and opportunities of the labour market as well as face its changes and demands. This is also supported by the economic sphere and the social partners, thus the project has its impact on the sectoral level as well. The purpose of teachers' training was to present examples of good practices in the field of apprenticeships, a cooperation with social partners (companies, craftsmen) and key stakeholders in the field of the labor market (employers, trade unions). Some teachers have also gained experience in teaching in educational programs that are implemented in the form of apprenticeships, because there are none in the Slovenian environment as it is an innovative approach to planning, implementing and evaluating the learning process.
Four years ago, our school faced the challenge of implementing education in the form of an apprenticeship. We conducted the training according to the apprenticeship system in the training program toolmaker - metal designer, a year later in an innovative educational program papermaker and finally a mechatronics operator. The implementation of apprenticeship is an innovative form of vocational education, which brings a new working concept and cooperation between a student, a teacher at school and a mentor at the company. It requires a development of key vocational competences to meet the challenges of the apprenticeship. Above all, the biggest challenge we addressed in the project was, how to successfully establish and organize cooperation with school teachers and mentors in companies, following the foreign examples of good practices of apprenticeships, as it is a matter of mutual and synchronous implementation of the educational process in two locations and still only in one and the same target group – the apprentices.