As a preparation for their future jobs, students in vocational training should have got the chance to support their school training at the Vocational College of Bottrop with a 4-week stay in a European country. A period of 4 weeks can be integrated into their school and vocational education and is a suitable time to enable the students to get to know a foreign European culture. The students would have done job-related tasks in companies in order to verify gained vocational knowledge as well as use and enlarge their professional and language skills. Staff mobilites should have led to new perspectives for organising foreign work experience programmes and gaining skills to prepare students for their working life. Due to this, more educational stays were planned to offer new opportunities to our staff, like learning about administrative organisation, improving job-related skills as well as teaching methods for developing vocational skills. Job shadowing and learning projects for about 5 to 14 days were planned.
The Vocational College of Bottrop is situated in the Emscher-Lippe area in Germany and offers differentiated vocational training in the fields of Business & Administration, Technology, Information Technology, Health & Social Studies, Cosmetics & Gastronomy. As the college is accredited as a European school, giving adolescents the opportunity to explore and experience Europe as a place for a mutual living and working environment is one of the most important objectives. The foreign work experience project is essential as an opportunity to work and gain experience abroad. Due to the restrictions, risks and impact of the Corona panedemic on vocational education the project could not completely be realised as planned.