Our most important aims were to develop the trainees’ professional and foreign language competences, to teach them new catering and gastronomy skills, to get them acquainted with new cultures, and make them possible to get professional experience as well as to learn self-government, self-control, independence, team spirit and provide them the chance to simplify their studies by acknowledging their new competences. Our long term aim was to enhance the popularity of our school and vocational education by the Erasmus Pro practices as well as harmonise the interests of the business sphere and the interests of the institution taking into account the needs of the labour market. It is a general expectation to make vocational education widely accepted and to motivate young people to study valuable professions by modern methods. With the help of our programmes even the less competent trainees could get abroad and fulfil their practice in high standard hotels. Our further aim was to complement the domestic teaching material with versatile working programmes that come up to the foreign partners’ expectations and also to realise a more effective cooperation between the professional, language and form teachers’ communities of the school. The aim of the teachers’ mobility – besides developing the competences of the teachers - was give them the chance to try themselves in a foreign country. The professional results achieved abroad can be applied by them in their work in curricula development and practical trainings as well.
The mobility certificate of the institution made it feasible for us to organise our mobility programmes with our foreign partners by simplified and predictable planning procedures. Unfortunately, due to the COVID epidemics our programmes to prepare for and realise the mobility projects could not be fully carried out according to schedule so we asked for the extension of our project period. Our school is committed to not only the theoretical and practical trainings but also to providing further opportunities for personal development of our trainees. As our trainees in Hungary have to take part in block type training, it involves that at the end of the theoretical training they have to pass an exam before starting the practical training that can be either domestic or foreign ones. Our trainees took part in 3 and 4,5-month mobility programmes in Cyprus and in Germany. For the sake of the successful foreign mobility programmes we carried out a thorough preparation work: we invited the foreign hotel managers for an interview, we elaborated the work programmes together with them, we organised meetings for the parents and students. We paid special attention to the socio-economically disadvantaged students as well as to students with lower level of competences (32 out of 50 are disadvantaged). We informed our foreign partners about the present level of skills and competences of our trainees. In 2021 and 2022 because of the closure it became extremely important for our trainees to develop their professional and language competences in real life situations and environment and also to be with their peers. We clarified the expected learning outcomes and competences with the foreign hotel managers and we took these expectations into consideration based on ECVET criteria. The new element of our project was promoting our mobility programmes among our colleagues. Upto 2020-2022 5 colleagues took part in 2-week mobility programmes. They worked in the kitchen, the restaurant and the confectionery of the hotel. Their report gave evidence of their personal and professional development. They reported about how they cooperated with the local workers and it was an interesting experience for them to cooperate with our students, too.