- The participating students come from four different fields: Office & Sales, Accounting-Informatics, Secretarial-Language and Health & Welfare Sciences. Within the TSO and BSO offer in Flanders, we may consider these directions as theoretically oriented TSO/BSO directions. An internship makes it possible to give a practical interpretation to everything they are offered within their curriculum at school, which goes further and is richer than what we can offer within a school context. In this way, we wanted the pupils to experience that their theoretical education has its importance and that it enables them to function in a practical working environment. - On the other hand, it is also an excellent means of keeping the teachers' teaching practice up to date. In this way, they could check whether their teaching content continues to meet the demands of the 'work field' and update it where necessary. - With an internship we also wanted to make clear to the pupils that the knowledge and skills that are offered and evaluated at school are not an end in themselves, but that they have to take them with them outside of school. The same applies to attitudes that are evaluated at school. By also being confronted with the importance of politeness, punctuality, cleanliness, ... during an internship, the pupils could experience that these are not just attitudes from school. - With an international work placement, the objectives are of course even higher. With this KA1 project, we wanted to position technical and vocational education in general, and our technical and vocational orientations in particular, positively in the education market. The fact that our school creates the opportunity for those students to participate in a KA1 traineeship, makes those directions more popular with parents and students inside and outside our school. By embedding internationalisation more and more in our policy, we hoped to increase the popularity and image of our school. - The introduction of a different work culture and work ethic makes their education richer. We hoped to stimulate their eagerness to learn. - The intercultural skills and improved language skills that are typical of an internship abroad look good on a CV, and can make all the difference when applying for a job. - A large number of students have ended up in these directions through the well-known 'waterfall system' or through a negative choice. The fact that they are 'only' technical/vocational orientations has a negative connotation for the pupils, and often also for their parents. With such an internship, we hoped to show that this negative feeling of inferiority is unjustified, and to make them think more positively about technical and vocational education. - As a result of this 'inferiority feeling', the pupils often have few ambitions when it comes to looking for work or further study. With a KA1 project we wanted to turn this around, make them realise that they have more to offer than they think. - Very often, vocational pupils quit after their education at our school and then settle for a job in which they do not feel happy, this also applies to a small group of technical pupils. We hoped that this KA1 experience would make them more flexible and would make them shift their ambitions and encourage them to qualify further so that they would have a stronger position on the labour market and can do a job that they really enjoy. - Technical students find it more difficult to choose a field of study after secondary education; there is more doubt and uncertainty than before. A KA1 experience allows them to get to know themselves better, to assess themselves and know what they want and don't want. We hoped that it would help our pupils to make a good study choice, which would have the additional effect of increasing their chances of success, and that it would help to make their future image clearer in general. - For this project, we chose to situate it in a large city, because we are dealing with a school population that is not really (internationally) mobile and does not come into contact with much more than what happens "under the church tower". With this cosmopolitan environment, we hoped to break through this restrictive framework and expand their living environment. They would also come into contact with this multicultural environment at the internships. - Our students have little opportunity to apply English in a real-life context. Moreover, they are afraid to express themselves in English, thinking that they do not know it well enough. In London/Dublin, they would be in contact with English 24/7, in the workplace and with their host families. We hoped that by doing this, they would find that they are more skilled than they think, so that the fear of speaking it would subside, and their proficiency in English would take a big leap forward. - For this project, we would work with an intermediary partner (ADC College), as they could help us to stay with host families. This is something that we could not organise ourselves, but which we felt was an important added value. In this way, our students continued to speak English even after their internship day. In addition, the host families are usually of a different cultural background, which is also an enrichment and a mind-opener with regard to the world they live in. Moreover, by staying with a host family, the students would be even more obliged to stand on their own two feet, and we wanted to increase their self-reliance. This is much less appreciated when staying under the direct supervision of accompanying teachers. - With such a project, we also wanted innovative input for the teachers involved in the internships, which would enrich the curriculum, the lessons and the local internship organisation. - The development of a number of soft skills, often called secondary skills, is also very important to us. It is a general fact that technical and vocational pupils have problems with improving their problem-solving and self-reliance skills. The way we give our students a lot of independence during the KA1 training period appeals to this skill. With soft skills we also aim for a greater openness towards other work cultures and cultures in general, more tolerance, European citizenship, new social skills, less fear of new work environments, adaptability, sense of responsibility, team spirit, punctuality, good appearance, respectful language, dealing with and respecting authority, entrepreneurial spirit, open mindset, better self-knowledge....
Internationalisation, and in particular a KA1 project, offers unique opportunities for a school as a structure, for the curricula, teachers and students involved. It gives the school a certain drive which has repercussions on many levels. You get a certain appeal and image that is appreciated by externs, school management, other schools, local community, parents, students from other school, internship companies, … A lot of parents and students, but also colleagues and staff member of the centres for pupil guidance who are not familiar with our curricula, don't know what technical and vocational study fields represent, often thinking they will offer fewer opportunities for the future. It ensures that people understand more that technical/vocational education is not an 'inferior' education compared to general education, but a 'different' education that offers other opportunities and gives just as many chances to a young person who chooses it. In other words, it makes our education and our school more known and hipper, and with a more adequate perception by the people. The courses receive a different and broader input, the internship content becomes more diversified, the lesson content is being adapted and updated, it enhances the quality of our teaching. Evaluation is a hot item at our school, and in education in general. It is obvious that a student is more than the result of the classical summative tests. A KA1 project offers new evaluation parameters, as a consequence students are evaluated differently, broader and thus better. Also teachers and students who didn't directly participate in this KA1 project, benefit from this. The modal student at our school cannot be called a global or European citizen, they usually live in a small world. A KA1 project is a means to broaden their horizon. We strongly believe that an open-minded view is an important way of life, and a tool to organise their life differently. Our school population is characterised by an increase in the number of pupils who have fewer opportunities, mainly due to socio-economic factors. A KA1 project is a unique opportunity for this profile of pupils to get acquainted with a 'world' they do not know, and we also hope that this will give them better chances later on to outgrow that world independently, on the labour market and on a personal level. Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version) The KA1 projects are integrated in the study guidance on which our school focusses. We think it's extremely important that our students make good study choices and have a strong position in the job market.