In-service skill development, or apprenticeship training, that can be directly assessed is the core of vocational education. The biggest problem in this training seems to be students’ lack of adaptation to working in companies. Those known to be successful at school may turn to be the most problematic students at work. It is widely claimed that students have problems in dealing with official documents, filing, hierarchy, and complying with rules. Thus, companies may demand replacement of students or tend to avoid accepting students at all. Feeling rejected and less confident, student could lose their potential rather than exploring it for work life. This causes excessive workload at schools and drop in students’ employment, thereby having a bad influence in national economy. The project covers 11 Grade students and their field teachers. The other partners outside school will support us with technical stuff and about managing the process. Five student and two teachers from each partner country will join the both mobilities. For the abovementioned problem there are online training opportunities provided by some European vocational schools under the authority of ministries of education. In these trainings students usually start up online companies in the 11th Grade. These virtual startups have the same steps as any actual ones. For example, they have their tax number, bank accounts, digital money, and founding members etc. Company management consists of managers, accountants, and marketing personnel etc. In their online trading with other similar companies, they sell and buy products. Each company has a name, slogan, logo and a specific sector. During this process, students are required to behave as in a real company and keep a record of all official documents. As employees of a virtual company, students become more prepared to work in companies when their apprenticeship starts. Although work-based learning is the core of vocational education, there is no system checking the success of vocational schools in this in our country. Schools seem to manage their tasks on this issue arbitrarily. Some schools cannot find place for apprenticeship, some others hardly meet the demands from companies. The main goal of our project is to create a common platform which will advance our students pre-apprenticeship skills and build a relationship among relevant institutions. Our project partner SIOV, an institution affiliated to ministry of education, applies the abovementioned training successfully in Slovakia. We, under the supervision of SIOV, plan to create a website providing service for online companies at our school. We will conduct the project by letting students in groups start their own companies on the main website. In the beginning there will be companies of three groups consisting of five students. There will be one supervisor teacher for each company. Student will manage most of the process. The most successful company will attend the educational fair in Slovakia and represent our country in the designated booth. The other partners will attend the same event and assist us. By gaining an international experience, our students increase their knowledge for the system to be built. The second educational mobility will be held in our city. We, together with the project partners, will organize an educational fair for online training, and through the help of provincial administration of education we will invite vocational schools in our city. We will make sure the attendance of all relevant parties in vocational education, such as students, teachers, parents, NGO members and businesspeople. We will evaluate the success of our project and try to disseminate it at national level. We will also present our reports and outputs to the relevant department of ministry of education. We will make our website and database available for public use for dissemination as it is currently done in many European countries. We will also promote our project at schools, thereby enabling its integration to vocational education and sustainability in due course. We expect all our students to develop their social and linguistic skills as well as work skills and eventually be more productive and happier in their work life. In this way, they will be indispensable to companies. Eventually, these employees will contribute to national economy and productivity and growth of companies, which is our ultimate goal and desire.
We wanted to add innovative ideas and the idea of establishing their own business and brand among the future plans of vocational education students. In this way, we believe that the number of brands established in our country will increase in the future and this situation will contribute to the national economy of our country. We aimed for our students who received this training to experience the establishment stages of a company, the organizational structure of the company, the company hierarchy, production and marketing processes and all the other processes that a company goes through. In this way, we wanted to encourage them for commercial entrepreneurship by teaching them the advantages and disadvantages of starting a company. We tried to teach them the whole business process and to be prepared for the difficulties of business life. Another issue we want to achieve is that during the meetings we held with the Ministry of National Education's projects unit, we learned that they wanted to start studies on this subject, and we agreed that we would report the project results to them. We will share the experience we have gained from this project with all our partners and we will use it in our country.
As it is known, vocational education in Turkey pursues an education policy to meet the need for intermediate staff. Vocational high school graduates participate in business life as an intermediate staff or try to enter universities by preparing for university exams. With this project, we wanted to adapt an education model that is not used in our country by applying it in our school. By motivating our students to establish their own companies and entrepreneurship as a third way, as in Europe, we wanted to show them that the processes of establishing a company, catching innovative business opportunities is not difficult in today's world and we wanted to spread this study throughout our country. It is seen that many schools in Europe use this system methodologically. The system has developed methods to train students as intermediate staff and entrepreneurs. This education model basically aims to increase student competence by simulating the working and operating structure of a real company with all steps. This training provides motivation, imagination and self-confidence to students being entrepreneurs, establishing their own business and branding.