As stated in the Tourism Strategy of Turkey in 2023, education and training regarding tourism should focus on vocation and should contain measurable outcomes. The education and training in tourism should target at raising awareness on tourism sources, protecting the touristic values and maximizing touristic contribution to the national economy. The organizational capacities of the institutions that give training in tourism should be improved for better quality education and training. The reputation and profitability of the sector depends on maintaining the training quality. Training and education programs should be prepared through appropriate findings of analyses of current changes and possible future changes. “Quality awareness in education” should be raised in vocational training centers and the society. The main priorities of the sector are standardization, appropriate assessment and evaluation, productivity at international levels, the development of service quality and improvement in the skill levels for employment. While identifying the academic education policies that will lead the development of managers and researchers who will give direction to the sector, vocational training and education for highly qualified personnel should simultaneously be taken into consideration. The priority should be on creating the highly qualified and adequate labor force to the sector. The project called “Tourism Education Coordination in Turkey and Europe” was for 12 months and its effects will be spread over years through the dissemination activities. Training durations was realized as 2 weeks. The project was consist of 2 training mobilities: The 1st training mobility was realized between 16 April 2017 and 30 April 2017 in Vilnius, Lithuania with the participation of 14 students from Accommodation and Travel Organization Department with 2 accompanying teachers in order to receive training of housekeeping organizations. The 2nd training mobility was realized between 07 May 2017 and 22 May 2017 in Budapest, Hungary with the participation of 10 teachers from Food and Beverages Services and Accommodation and Travel Management Departments in order to accomplish field trips and on the spot observations. Our school, which has an adopted notion of intermediate staff education and training with internationally accepted qualities, should always be in close cooperation with EU countries. Vocational Training Mobility projects are important opportunities to create cooperation between Turkey and Europe. Our students got the chance to improve their professional skills as well as their foreign language skills through these projects in practice hotels and observations at other companies. Their acquired knowledge and skills was lead to improvements not only at professional levels and also in personal and cultural levels. The fact that our staff was received training in abroad was created impacts that can be maintained and continued in the long term. Through this project, we are targeting to make our students and teachers to adopt the main philosophy of Lifelong Learning Program and to integrate this gain with the organizational capacity. The continuing interaction between our school and European vocational associations was added European dimension to our training standards and contribute to our capacity to become global. The methodology was realised for teachers can be listed as follows: observation on the spot, observation on the job, presentations, meetings, comparative data, statistical information, and etc. The methodology for students was included practical education and training, technical field trips, visual presentations, meetings, visits and evaluations.

The vocational highs schools in Turkey bear the burden for finding appropriate fields for the young according to the needs of the sectors and preparing young individuals for the future prospects not only with the theoretical knowledge given in lessons but also the practical applications in real life as well. Vocational and technical training has priority not only for Turkish National Ministry of Education but also for all of the local partners as well. 10th Reconstruction Plan and other top politics documents give great importance to vocational and technical training and empower the relations between the labor force markets and vocational training. It also provisions the fact that learning should continue from cradle to grave. The same plan also underlines the fact that the graduates of such schools still have high percentages of unemployment even though the need for qualified labor continues to increase. Therefore, employment of the students of vocational high schools requires students to gain the required qualities in order to employ them. Our school targets with the current vocational training mobility project to have our students acquire vocational skills and to increase employment opportunities in child development and food & beverages fields. The current project titled “Practical Applications for Female Students’ Vocational Career” will be conducted by Tavşanlı Hayme Main Vocational and Technical High School. There are no local partners in our project. The project will last for a year and it will start as of 01 September 2016 and finish 31 August 2017. The hosting partner for the child development department is a private company called “Supra Vita Oktató, Szolgáltató és Tervező Betéti Társaság” in Eger in Hungary and they will accept 17 students from Child Development Department between 4 February 2017 and 19 February 2017. These students will receive applied training on drama for child development, the features of drama, training atmosphere for drama, equipment in drama classes, features of drama leaders and drama in special training. The hosting partner for the food & beverages department is a school in Prag, Checz Republic thats name Soukromou školu Gastronomie Efes and they will accept 21 students between 02 April 2017 and 17 April 2017. The students will receive applied training on open buffet services including the preparation and serving of the following items: strip cheese canapé, Swiss cheese canapé, roquefort canapé, prosciutto canapé, anchovy canapé, sardine canapé, smoked word-fish canapé, etc. The participants are the 11th grade and 12th grade students from the departments of child development and food & beverages. Some of the participants will graduate in June 2016. As our school is a female only school, all of the participants will be female students. The requirements for participation will be basic vocational and language skills. We will pay particular attention to select the students who will be available for abroad travel. For each of the visits, there will be two accompanying teachers. The goals of this project can be listed as follows: to have the students gain high self-esteem, to raise awareness on working life and responsibilities, to provide improvement to stop positive discrimination against women, to improve job related skills of students, to provide qualified labour force for our country, to improve foreign language skills of the students, to get acquainted with European culture and education curricula, to improve relations with EU and to add “European Dimension” to the current school curriculum. The unemployment rate in Turkey in September 2014 wa 10,5% according to the data provided by Turkish Statistical Association. The unemployment rate among 15-24 age group was 19,1%. Women’s participation to the labor force was 31,1%. These data indicate the fact that the unemployment rate for the young and women participation in labor force is quite low in Turkey. As all of the participants of this project are young girls, this project will lead to a positive change on these rates in the long run. We believe our project will contribute to qualified employment rather employment alone. We also anticipate that new partnerships will be built with other hosting nations as we gain experience in running projects. Consequently, the institutional capacity of our school will increase and the education curriculum will reach to the European standards.