The objectives of this project were: - To improve students' technological knowledge and skills, and to increase the competitiveness of future professionals in the labour market, by introducing them to the quality of service provision in other EU countries, innovations in work, qualification requirements and national characteristics; - improve students' social and general competences: intercultural communication, socialisation, teamwork and foreign language skills; - develop students' international mobility, their ability to assess their competences and their integration into the international labour market. - To enable vocational teachers to improve their professional and technological competences, to adopt best educational practices and to apply them in their work; - to give every teacher the opportunity to re-evaluate his/her professional practice, to plan professional development, to creatively test new teaching methods and new technological equipment; - to provide opportunities for teachers to develop personal initiative and to improve their qualifications by sharing best practice with colleagues from other countries.
The project "Improving Professional Competences in Europe" was aimed at students of the Alytus Vocational Training Centre and teachers and trainers of vocational education and training. The project was intended to cover all initial vocational training programmes run by the Alytus VET Centre and therefore had 14 host partners in ten countries. All partners are vocational schools or institutions closely related to vocational training, some of them have Erasmus+ mobility charters. The application was submitted in order to continue the international links established by Alytus PRC with its long-standing foreign partners and to discover new ones. It is also to give students and teachers the opportunity to broaden their horizons, to be more motivated to study or work, to be more interested in the innovations of their profession, to acquire new knowledge and practical skills, to see their specialty, teaching and learning methods from a slightly different angle, through the prism of a different country or culture, and at a different pace of life. The project was designed to achieve these objectives of the Alytus PRC: - to improve students' technological knowledge and skills, to increase the competitiveness of future professionals in the labour market by introducing them to the quality of service provision, innovations, qualification requirements and national characteristics of other EU countries; - improve students' social and general competences: intercultural communication, socialisation, teamwork and foreign language skills; - develop students' international mobility, their ability to assess their competences and their integration into the international labour market. - To enable vocational teachers to improve their professional and technological competences, to adopt best educational practices and to apply them in their work; - to give every teacher the opportunity to re-evaluate his/her professional practice, to plan professional development, to creatively test new teaching methods and new technological equipment; - to provide opportunities for teachers to develop personal initiative and to improve their qualifications by sharing best practice with colleagues from other countries. The application was also submitted in order to implement the internationalisation strategy of Alytus PRC, to keep the school international, open to innovations, constantly changing and improving, and attractive to students and staff.