Victoria+
Start date: Jun 1, 2015,
End date: May 31, 2017
PROJECT
FINISHED
“Victoria+” project is aimed at providing the youth with the opportunity to undergo placements and work-based learning on the international level, mastering their professional competences, enhancing their intercultural competences, foreign language skills (English, German, Spanish, and Italian) and encouraging school students’ motivation to learn.
The goal is to promote vocational education and challenge the stereotype of vocational education, persisting in Latvian society, that VET is intended only for the students who are not willing or are not capable to study. Victoria students strive for knowledge and work experience, therefore they are goal-oriented on the challenging themselves developing their professional and personal skills. And Erasmus+ mobilities provided within the present project give them such a chance to fulfil their goals and aspirations.
“Victoria+” project consists of two activities. The first activity involves VICTORIA learners’ traineeships in vocational institutes abroad in Germany. The second activity consists of VICTORIA learners traineeships in companies abroad in Italy and Spain. Within the project the school is cooperating with four foreign companies: WBS training, A Rocca, Formación Europea, Práctica, Movilidad and Europroyectos Leonardo Da Vinci Córdoba. In total 43 students will have the opportunity to participate in Erasmus+ mobilities.
The experience of international mobility ensures students’ future professional development. The previous experience of our school learners clearly indicated that those students who participated in study placements abroad had been provided with the workplaces after their graduation. Thus we can conclude that international mobilities guarantee VICTORIA students employability.
As a result, the project serves as a guarantee that students, who had undergone traineeships abroad, are more motivated to both continue their studies and graduate school, mastering their professional skills, as well as, to be afterwards active participants of the common European labour market. Through traineeship mobilities students put their knowledge, skills and competences in practice, which in turn fosters students’ self-esteem and creativity.
To sum up, the project fosters and ensures the international cooperation between the vocational school and foreign employers and representatives of foreign vocational institutions. On the national level, the project provides the possible measures of combating youth unemployment and early school leaving, via enhancing youth desire and motivation to learn and reach self-esteem via participation in mobility projects. Moreover, the opportunity of international mobilities for vocational secondary school students increases the attractiveness of vocational secondary education, which is one of the strategic goals of education reforms within Implementation of the "Europe 2020" strategy.