Nowadays, we often come across the concept of skills shortage, which means the difference between the choice of trainings and the needs of the labor market. Although the problem cannot be solved by education alone, vocational training can do the most to ensure that students acquire the knowledge they need to meet the needs of the labour market.
The Erasmus + project Reacti-VET (Teachers for Reactive and Responsive Vocational Education) in which we participated as a lead partner is aimed to help this.
In most European countries, vocational training follows a centrally regulated curriculum that specifies the content of the training. The curriculum leaves a minimal opportunity for teachers to inbuild the expertise required by the market in the curriculum at the moment.
The development, accreditation and modification of central curricula framework is usually a very long and complex process, which makes the system inflexible and makes it difficult for the school to be able to respond immediately to the current needs of the labor market.
The aim of the Reacti-VET project was to develop a model that enables vocational teachers to mobilize the internal energies of the school in cooperation with stakeholders - students, parents, the teaching staff, but mostly employers facing a shortage of skilled workforce - identify knowledge and skill gaps and integrate them into the curriculum of graduating students in line with vocational training one.
With the project partners, we have developed a continuing education program and an electronic learning content that presents technological tools that can be used in education, collaborative training and curriculum development in a practice-oriented approach. The training is tested with the involvement of Estonian, Hungarian and Italian teachers, then it will be finalized by the consortium partners based on the feedback and accredited in each country according to the partners' national internal system.
The accredited in-service teacher training course is already available in Hungary!
Project ID: 2018-1-HU01-KA202-047816
Program: Erasmus +, KA2 Strategic Partnership
Participating countries: Estonia, Hungary, Italy, United Kingdom
Lifespan: 1 September 2018 - 28 February 2021
