European education and training systems continue to fall short in providing the right skills for employability, and are not working adequately with business or employers to bring the learning experience closer to the reality of the working environment. These skills mismatches are a growing concern for European industry's competitiveness (Industrial Policy Communication Update COM, 2012, p:582 ). By 2020, 20% more jobs will require higher level skills. Education needs to drive up both standards and levels of achievement to match this demand, as well as encourage the transversal skills needed to ensure young people are able to be entrepreneurial and adapt to the increasingly inevitable changes in the labour market during their career. The scope and pace of reforms needs to be scaled up so high quality skills can support both growth and jobs (EU Commission Rethinking Education: Investing in skills for better socio-economic outcomes, 2012, p:2). Skills mismatch refers to a discrepancy between the demand and supply of skills on the labour market. In other words a situation in which the skills sought by employers are different from the skills offered by job-seekers or workers. In order to achieve excellence in VET, curricula must be systematically renewed, delivery must be constantly modernized and businesses, especially SMEs, must be actively involved. VET must be able to react to the demand for advanced vocational skills, tailored to the regional economic context. Within this context given, this project aims to develop a platform through which vocational education systems and the labour market, especially the SMEs, communicate interactively, while one side voting for/valuing the skills they need and the other side, that's the vocational systems answers by updating the current curriculum. Also, the training content developed on skills analysis and mapping through the ECVET Skills Platform is considered to serve the quality of vocational education and training systems, giving the experts responsible for teaching technical skills the mission of teaching also the personal and conceptual skills.Target group of the project is vocational education and training institutions, teachers/trainers in VET, SMEs, employers, decision makers, non-governmental organizations and trainees. It aims at creating a channel among the members of the target group to keep them updated about the needs and requirements of the firms and the provided skills at educational institutions. During the project, the first step will be to identify qualifications of CNC Machining according to EQF as Level 4. Then, secondly, defining the expectations of the firms will be taken together with the opinions of technical teachers. In this context, ideas and expectations from firms and individuals in decision-making positions in the labour market will be gathered and a list of the necessary skills required will be established. Then, with ECVET Skills platform that will be installed on the internet, a ranking of importance will be listed by firms. This is the most innovative part of the project. Following this, the training curriculum in vocational high schools for CNC Manchine will be renewed and/or developed in order to ensure the most needed top ten skills. Trainers will be trained on this platform and will be informed about how they should implement their education. Then, hese trainers will apply the top ten skill-building training curricula on the qualification list from the digital platform.The students and teachers will be able to access into the videos and teaching materials on the platform and assess their own learning with the rubric provided. Therefore, they will have higher self-esteem in terms of qualifications and the market can be more satisfied in with hiring more qualified employers. On the other hand, top ten skill lists created by firms; and all teaching materials and videos created in a dynamic fashion can be downloaded openly to all individuals in order to ensure that the created platform reaches wider population. Thus, as students, teachers, and trainers easily access these information, the widespread impact of the platform will be increased.Establishing a vocational education and training curriculum and extensive content by using an online web portal to develop a system for skills and qualifications that are supposed to be based on the needs of the labour markets is the innovative wall of the project. One of the pioneering innovative elements will be enabling countries to obtain the skill ranking of CNC machining. The proposed web portal can be seen as one of the most key innovations of the project, since it will be accessible by all related stakeholders.

"The Level Up project, funded by the European Union Erasmus+ Adult Education Program, was implemented to provide digital skills to adults with blue-collar occupations. The coordinating institution of the project is Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality. Partner institutions involved in the project are: The Governorship of Istanbul, TÜRKONFED (Turkey), Bridging to the Future (England), Egina (Italy), MediaCreativa (Spain) and Instituto de Soldadura e Qualidade (Portugal). During the project, a training content consisting of 14 different digital skills training modules that blue-collar adults can benefit from was prepared and transferred to the developed digital training platform. In addition, a teacher's handbook has been developed as a guide and presented to the instructors who train blue-collar adult students.The training content designed for the Level Up project were developed after a 2-stage study.Project Outputs: IO1 (Leading Partner MediaCreativa) - Current Situation Analysis of Adult Training Centers and Adult Trainers in Terms of Digital Skills Training in Partner Countries: In this output the education methods, strategies and samples of adult education centres in Turkey and in the countries of the partner institutions were examined and a European report was prepared. This output revealed strategies used in digital skills training of adult training centres, containing good practices in terms of digital skills training offered by these centers. As the last activity of this output we created a European report projecting a European scope on digital skills training in Europe whic made it transferable at European level. In this output we developed a template for good practices and strategies, a template for approaches and technologies used by adult trainers. Partners interviewed adult training center representatives and adult trainers, results collected from all partners were embedded in the European report.IO2 (Leading Partner TÜRKONFED) - Need Analysis: Aim of this output was to be able to assess which digital skills are needed to develop and which skills are possessed by blue and pink collar workers. After the completion of this output, we had the European wide skill lists which are needed by blue and pink collar workers in order to become up-to-date for the digitalisation of work places. In this output a desk research on finding the required skills of digital era for blue and pink collar workers: Partners found 5 different and most needed skills in the new digital era during the desk research and meeting with focus groups consisting of career experts, trainers from the field and employers were organises in order to find out the digital skills required for digital era and learn current digital skills of blueand pink collar workers. A questionnaire was implemented with the participation of 40 blue and pink collar workers from each partner organisation and they were asked about the skills detected during the first two activities and this way their needs were understood.IO3 (Leading Partner Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality) - the training contents were developed according to the training titles determined considering the results of IO2. As a result of this activity, 14 different training modules were prepared and a digital training platform was established to transfer the produced training contents. The steps of this output included: Distribution of the determined training module titles considering the experiences of partner organisations. Preparation of training materials for 2 skills per partner and validation of the training content in order to improve the content.IO4 (Leading Partner EGINA) - Training contents were uploaded to this platform and the platform was tested by a total of 70 experts (adult trainers) and 35 blue-collar adult students with the work carried out by each partner institution, and feedback was received from the end users about the platform. As a result of the feedback obtained, improvement studies were carried out on the platform.IO5 (Leading Partner Governorship of Istanbul) - the ""Teacher's Handbook"" was prepared and a document was created to guide adult educators who will use the educational content produced within the scope of the Level Up project. The handbook created describes the in-class activities related to the training content and the working system of the digital education platform and it is ready to download in all partner languages on the project website which is: https://levelup.ibb.istanbul/All intellectual outputs described on the project application form were realised during the project’s lifetime thanks to the partners' commitment to the project.5 TPMs were held, one in every partner country with 56 participants in total. One LTTA event was held with 17 participants and 6 Multiplier events were organised to disseminate the project to different stakeholders with the participation of 205 partcipants in all partner organisations."

<< Objectives >>Tracking graduates is a key policy priority but specific solutions for DUAL VET remain unattended. The aim of FOLLOW APP project is to set-up and test a graduate tracking method supported by digital tools designed to track employment and career progression of apprentices in DUAL VET programmes, addressed to VET teachers, counsellors, in-company trainers and learners, improving the responsiveness of VET to the changing demands in the labour market and strengthening the Quality Assurance in VET.<< Implementation >>1. Implementation of a Quality Assurance strategy for project monitoring and evaluation.2. Development of the European Framework of Competences on graduate tracking of apprentices in DUAL VET.3. Generation of digital-based solution on graduate tracking of apprentices in DUAL VET.4. Testing and evaluation activities in Spain, Italy, Greece and Turkey, producing guidelines and recommendations.5. Sharing and promoting project results with an exploitation and sustainability strategy.<< Results >>The manin project results are:MR1. Quality and Evaluation PlanMR2. European Framework of Competences in graduate tracking of apprentices in DUAL VETMR3. FOLLOW APP Virtual CampusMR4. Mobile App on graduate tracking of apprentices in DUAL VETMR5. Pilot actions in Spain, Italy, Greece and Turke involving VET teachers, counsellors and in-company trainers and apprenticesMR6. Report of Guidelines and Recommendations MR7. Sharing & Promotion PlanMR8. Exploitation & Sustainability Strategy

Youth workers and social workers play an important role in helping migrants overcoming problems they encounter in a new society and integration. Youth work has much to offer in services for migrants and refugees. From a skill base that integrates intrapersonal and inter-personal helping with the practicalities of assisting people to find their way around the social welfare system, youth workers and social workers can respond to the complex needs of young refugees within an understanding of the wider context of family relationships and social institutions. That’s why it is important developing youth workers’ knowledge, skills and competences in helping refugees and migrants. In order for youth workers to feel prepared to work with immigrant and refugee youth, training program must offer trainings that can help youth workers gain necessary knowledge and skills specifically related to the unique needs, assets, challenges and strengths of immigrant youth. For youth workers that will work with immigrant youth, training program need to develop supplemental training materials that specifically deal with issues they may encounter in these unique relationships. Topics that can be covered include: tips and ideas for helping a young person with language and acculturation issues, activity suggestions involving cultural sharing, good practices related to working with families, listening skills and understanding both assets and challenges of the migrant and refugee population.Considering all these needs, the main OBJECTIVE of the project was to develop and test an innovative training curriculum for youth workers to support them in reaching out to young migrants and refugees, and increase youth workers’ competences and foster their professional development. The specific objectives of the project were:1)to analyse the training needs of youth workers 2)to develop of an innovative training curriculum for youth workers who work with young migrants and refugees.3)to train youth workers with this new training curriculum 4)to increase professional knowledge and skills of youth workers in the area of migrant and refugee work5)to improve the quality of the youth workThe project consortium was consisted of 6 organizations from different backgrounds: •A university experienced in the European projects and migration issues (Yasar University, Turkey, coordinator)•Two youth civil society organizations active in the field of youth projects and volunteering work (United Societies of Balkans, Greece and Eski Avrupa Gonullu Hizmeti Gonulluleri Genclik Dernegi, Turkey)•A network of social cooperatives providing services for the migrants and refugees (Formazione Co&So Network, Italy), •A social service provider for youth (Jugend am Werk Steiermark, Austria).•A public organization providing services for the migrants and refugees and involved in several European projects in the area of youth. (İstanbul Valiliği,Turkey), The main activities involve; developing and implementing a needs analysis survey, developing new training curriculum and training materials, organizing local testing sessions to test developed materials; organizing a short term joint staff training event, organizing 4 local multiplier events and one joint international multiplier event, other dissemination activities and quality assurance and evaluation activities.The main results, outputs and impact attained were: 1-Better understanding of the needs and expectations of the youth workers in terms of reaching out to the young migrants and refugees. (IO1. Need Analysis Report)2-Development of an innovative training curriculum for youth workers the content of which is based on the need analysis as well as analysis of current literature and research results on the subject. (IO2. Training Curriculum and Materials)3-Development of a Trainers' Handbook containing tips and recommendations for trainers. (IO3. Trainers Handbook)4) Implementation of the training programme, training of youth workers at a joint staff training event, increase in professional knowledge and skills of youth workers in the area of migrant and refugee work 5) Improvement of the quality of the youth work.All together more than 500 people come in direct contact with the project, learn about the outputs and provide feedback and opinions. Their awareness regarding young migrants and refugees and importance of the youth work are increased. The knowledge, skills and competences of youth workers who joined the training events are also increased. Furthermore, for partner organizations, the training of their staff with a new training program increased the quality of their services.

Learning Schools is addressing a common problem within the educational systems of most European countries – the loss of knowledge and expertise with teacher retirement, attrition and migration. Most schools do not have any mechanisms for knowledge capturing, synthesising and sharing within the organisation or others use only separate tools, which are not organised as an efficient system. The aim of our transnational team of experts is to enhance individual, team and organisational learning in schools. The direct target group of the project is school principals, school leaders and teachers from Bulgaria, Spain, Italy and Turkey. In order to achieve the project’s goals we are creating the first knowledge management system and platform for schools in the participants’ countries, which will contain a set of synchronised tools.The project will be developed in the framework of the learning organisation and schools as learning organisations, which has integrated most of the achievements of the management thought for the last 25 years. The diverse cultural, economic and educational context of all the countries will allow for rich country specific analyses of the characteristics of the learning schools in each country, the best practices they apply and the existing level of knowledge management. All the findings will lead to the development of an integrated model of learning schools (MLS), an elaborate assessment instrument for comparison of the achievements of all the users of the platform and the existing best practices. The country specific analyses will feed examples for the knowledge management system, which we are devising as well. All these tools will be synchronised on a platform, which will make them user-friendly and accessible for school principals and school leadership at large. The platform will lead to the development of learning community of schools network. All the registered users will be able to share best practices and expertise. The expected impact of the project is beyond the borders of the applicants’ countries. The integrated interactive resources will be available in English, Bulgarian, Italian, Spanish and Turkish languages. It is an innovative contribution on national, regional and EU level. All the findings and outcomes of the project will benefit researchers and policy makers with instruments for enhancement of the educational systems reforms.All the instruments integrated in the platform and the platform itself will be tested in several schools in each of the participants’ countries. The schools are selected to have good digital equipment, but incomplete knowledge management set of instruments. The piloting stage will provide significant and contextual feedback from the direct target group in each country. The platform and the instruments integrated it will be fine-tuned and improved afterwards in order to become intuitive and user friendly. The participants in the piloting stage are school leaders and teachers.A series of dissemination events are planned in each country in order to popularise the outcomes among the target group and the relative stakeholders. Two types of events will be conducted – national one in Bulgaria and regional in all other countries. In long term perspective, the project goal is to support the ongoing educational reforms in EU countries as it raises awareness about the need to capture, synthesise, share and asses knowledge on organisational level and will prove the benefits of that.