Project objectives: To provide an opportunity for the exchange of experiences in the area of education-employer engagement. To provide participants with practical ideas for how they can start and continue to build meaningful relationships with employers that are relevant to the courses offered by BFEI. To exchange good practice on how these relationships can be developed and sustained. To learn how to make these education-employer relationships mutually beneficial. To learn about effective processes, procedures, structures and administration required for effective employer engagement To increase the number of courses in BFEI that offer the opportunity to send students on EU work placements. To facilitate EU FET providers help find work placements in Dublin for their FET students. To raise awareness within BFEI of cultural differences and to promote a sense of European citizenship among staff. To increase the number of partnerships BFEI has with European FET colleges/institutes so that more staff and students can participate in mobility exchanges that lead to personal, academic and professional development. To further stimulate staff interest in the ERASMUS+ programme across all the departments in BFEI.
Blackrock Further Education Institute (BFEI) applied for Erasmus+ funding to work on a project on the theme of Education-Employer Engagement. In an increasingly competitive further education market, BFEI recognises the relevance of stronger links with industry and the value these links add to the courses offered in BFEI. As well as improving links with industry and employment in Ireland, the plan for this project was also to develop new links with partners in Europe as well as strengthening existing European partnerships that have been established in the past. We hoped that by running this project we would learn to develop and implement strategies that would help our EU FET partners source work placements for their students in Ireland. We also planned to increase teacher involvement in the overall Erasmus+ programme in the college by encouraging teaching staff who had not previously participated in Erasmus+ to participate.