The Isle of Wight College applied for this project in order to achieve some clear outcomes: Prepare students for the labour market and the world of work, improving their job application skills and giving them vocational and employability skills. Develop student's soft skills and employability skills such as communication, time management, etc. Give teaching staff the knowledge and experience of the working culture and then to share that with colleagues and students who do not participate. Improve the college's working practices with employers. Develop a well trained teaching and administrative staff to help achieve these outcomes. Reinforce and strengthen relationships with European partners in preparation for BREXIT. Widen local perspectives of our relationship with Europe and the opportunities available through encouraging beneficiaries to share their experiences more widely. Extend the number of curriculum areas to benefit from these outcomes.
The Isle of Wight is an area of deprivation. Young people often do not have the opportunity to go off island or overseas to develop new skills and confidence. This puts them at risk of radicalisation. This project is important to those young people, the teaching staff and all involved as it enables them to access experiences and skills that would not otherwise be possible. As a result of international projects, we recognise a complete change in our young people: their confidence increases and they improve their employability and life skills which impacts on them and the community for the rest of their lives. We recognised a change in UK educational policy that was working more towards practical qualifications and saw how Erasmus+ mobllities and work placements might benefit students on these programmes providing them with a unique experience. Our mission statement states that we put students first, raise community aspirations and work with employers. We could see how sending students on European work placements would help us to fulfil these objectives. They also fitted in with our Strategic Plan which refers to us offering a wide range of learning opportunities and us creating a highly skilled and motivated staff and students.