ABB Training Center GmbH & Co.KG is planning mobility projects for trainees of ABB and affiliated companies in Wales, Malta, and Denmark. English is the language that will be used in all three countries. Owing to differing schedules in the vocational colleges in Germany the length of the various stays abroad differ - 9 weeks in Wales, 4 weeks in Malta, and 3 weeks in Denmark. Our trainees in business admin will go to Wales, whereas our technical trainees are earmarked for Malta and Denmark.German industry and ABB in particular are in need of superbly trained employees with good language skills (at least one foreign language) and a high level of personal skills. They wull additionally have experience in working abroad and thus have no problem to work and live abroad if necessary. The main aims of our projects are the improvement of the language skills (English) and personal skills. All in all there will be 54 trainees enrolled in this mobility project:1) 20 trainees in business administration, who will work in Swansea in SMEs and local retailers. 2) 34 technical trainees (elelctronics/mechatronics) :a) 14 participants to Denmark and the vocational college Mercantek in Viborg. BWithin the scope of this activity there will also be a mobility project by our Danish partner with Danish trainees coming to ABB in Heidelberg.b) 20 participants to Malta, where they will work in SMEs in electronis/mechatronics. ABB does intentionally not send our trainees to other ABB organisations to ensure that the experience our apprentice have is very widespread and not influenced by the ABB way of doing things.The projects in Wales and Malta are insofar similar as the participants will be working in selected organisations (shops/offices/local authorities). Additionally there will be several sightseeing visits with a historical and cultural background. Twice weekly there will be English courses in the evening including cultural information and discussions, and there stay will then terminate with theexam SEFIC) of the LCCIEB which is recognised worldwide. The compentency levels are C1/C2 for the business admin trainees and b1/B2 for the technical apprentices.In both countries they will be accommodated in holiday apartments/flats which will add to the further development of their personal skills as they have to organise themselves (organise cohabitating, rules, cvosts, planning, etc). In Denmark the trainees will be attending courses and workshops with their Danish counterparts (who will also come to ABB Heidelberg on their own ERASMUS+ project). They will also work-shadow in local enterprises. They are accommodated on the college premises (boarding). The long-term benefist of this project are better qualified employees with "European work experience" who can integrate more easily in multinational teams and can availthemselves of cultural and foreign langauge skills - employees German industry is in need of. Additionally 14 of our own trainers will go for their own learning experience to Denmark (4) and Wales (10). These will be technical trainers. Just as the trainees the trainers will have work experience in Welsh organisations and also additional cultural and English courses. In Denmark they will be fully integrated into the vocational college, but also work-shadow in local enterprises. The working language in both cases is English.Whenever possible we plan to send our trainers at different times from the trainees (this might also create bottle necks regarding placements, but in particular in Wales slight overlaps might occur due to the fact that our trainees are in Wales for 9 weeks.Arbeitssprache ist auch hier Englisch.Also here we aim at having better qualified training staff who then can also prepare and advise the trainees better and more easily for their stay abroad. Trainers alwasy set an example, and when trainees realise that also their trainers have taken the plunge (not that this is really a problem with our trainees) and stayed abroad for a learning experience, they are more readily prepared to do the same.

Project Summary English:The consortium Duale Hochschule Mannheim/Stuttgart, DKFZ Heidelberg (DeutschesKrebsforschungszentrum), HPE (Hewlett Packard) as well as ABB (leader) is active in tetrtiary education and training according to the German apprenticeship system. To simplify matters we have classified the DKFZ as “enterprise” in our report although it is strictly a non-profitable research institution. Our „apprentices“ are trainees/apprentices being trained and educated within our organisations and the University for Coopderative studies (DHBW). All our apprentices/trainees have training contracts with one of the three enterprises and during their three-year apprenticeship they work in the enterprises and attend lectures at the DHBW. The syllabus for their work experience within the enterprises as well as their studies are laid down by the DHBW and must be strictly adhered to. This is also the case when they work outside the companies abroad.Therefore these courses are divided into practical work-experience phases (company) and theoretical study phases (DHBW). These phases normally alternate every three months. Within our consortium we strictly adhere to our policy of ensuring that every student spends one practical work-experience phase abroad – within the EU with Erasmus and worldwide on company costs. As all enterprises are globally active enterprises this practical work experience abroad is a critical part of our training system. Depending on possibilities the students work in company subsidiaries (HPE) or in subsidiaries and non-affiliated companies (ABB) and only in companies not connected to the institution (DKFZ). The object of these mobilities is to train and prepare future colleagues for management positions within our organisations, who have the necessary and demanded skills and knowledge.However, we need to state and clarify that we already look for future students when we carry out the selection process before we sign a training contract with them. This is also the reason why we do not need to have a sophisticated selection proves when these sztudents go abroad – apart from the fact that our numbers of students are very low compared to the “big” universities.We also need to point out that these students are our own company employees with a training and work contract. Thus our situation cannot be compared to the situation at a “normal” university, and we would like to point that out and would like to ask you to take this into consideration when evaluating the projects. Employees in our organisations need to have sufficient foreign language skills – preferably two foreign languages; they mus cooperate in internationally staffed work-teams either here in Germany or abroad (intercultural skills); they must have entrepreneurial skills and be able to act proactively.Experience has shown that these objectives are best achieved by spending time abroad. Additionally the students have to organize the placements and transport and accommodation themselves – not simple even if we are talking about subsidiary companies.The DKFZ employees are all business students, HPE sends their business and IT students, and ABB all areas (Business, and various engineering professions).All in all we have sent 48 students to European Union countries with Erasmus+The practical phases abroad must fulfill the requirements laid down by the DHBW. The students themselves are responsible for adhering to these regulations when working abroad, and upon their return they have to prepare reports for the DHBW and companies, so that they receive the required credit points.Lastly we need to point out that we only have „outbound students“ in our projects.

The project “VET for Employment” (VET4E), led by the Employers’ Confederation of Latvia (LDDK), aims at:- improving availability of qualified workforce through improving compliance of VET to the labour market needs;- facilitating and supporting organisation of qualitative traineeships and work based learning in vocational education and training (VET) system and- developing new tools for the use by the employers and VET institutions to promote work based learning in VET and to support employers, VET institutions and students in human resource development through traineeships. The motivation for the project lies in the problems identified in partner countries: rather low prestige of VET, limited opportunities for qualitative traineeships, low involvement of employers, low level of cooperation between VET institutions and employers, high youth unemployment, problematic transition from education institutions to labour market. In order to address these problems, project will carry out a number of activities aimed at improving availability of qualitative traineeship opportunities and to strengthen employers’ involvement in VET. The main activities planned to reach these goals are:- Carrying out a study on availability, quality and costs and benefits of traineeships in Latvia;- Organising learning visits to Austria and Germany to learn from well-established dual VET systems;- Developing an action plan for improvement of traineeships in Latvia;- Carrying out feasibility study on vocational education in Lithuania; and mutually learning between Latvia and Lithuania in the process of implementing VET reforms;- Developing IT tool on career portal prakse.lv (traineeship.lv) which would ensure opportunity to organise and implement traineeships and work based learning in easy and comfortable way, as well as to collect and analyse data on traineeships- To implement work based learning programmes in two sectors – metalworking sector and pharmacy sector. - To implement a number of initiatives/ mini pilotprojects to promote new IT tool, traineeships and work based learning in different sectors such as facilitating traineeships, namely, combining traineeships in several companies, career support activities, organising training for trainers in collaboration with the Ministry of Education and Science, developing mobility projects, organising professional skills competition, certification of traineeship places, organising seminars, organising site visits of pupils or VET trainers in companies, examining work safety during traineeships, piloting examination developed and organised by employers.The main result of the project will be increased number of qualitative traineeship opportunities. The consortium is made of partners from Latvia, Lithuania, Austria and Germany. Partners include the national and sectorial employer organisations, trade union organisation, VET institutions, research and training institution, as well as private companies. Project is also endorsed by the Ministry of Education and Science of Latvia, National Centre for Education and the Municipality of Riga.

The project's overall objective is to ensure that students, teachers and education managers achieve subject-related and intercultural competence through an individually planned and qualitative cooperation with the international partners.With this project we aim to help strengthen our VET-students' progress from being a student to enter the labour market by giving them access to practice-oriented education and training in an intercultural context . We focus on the student's individual education plan, when we plan and implement the study and/or work placement abroad.Furthermore, we want to give teachers and educational managers the opportunity of going through a study and/or work placement at one of the partner institutions and/or their local partners. This project´s partner institutions would like to learn from each other in relation to individual study plans, the academic and theoretical content of the VET educations and general exchange experiences on the dual education system.It is important that the students experience coherence in their education and that they learn units of their educational program during their stay abroad. We will therefore make use of Units of Learning Outcome within ECVET in order to qualify the academic content.The students will spent 3 weeks abroad going through a work placement or a combined study and work placement at one of the partners. The teachers and educational managers will spent 4 days at one of the partner institutions and/or their local partners. We will make use of Europass Mobility Certificate. We are applying for a total of 95 mobilities; 14 placements, 64 combined study and work placements and 17 staff mobilities.The participants will acquire intercultural skills and improve their language skills.

Das Projekt läuft unter dem Erasmus-Konsortium ABB Training Center Heidelberg, Deutsches Krebsforschungszentrum Heidelberg, Hewlett Packard Enterprise Schwalbach sowie den Dualen Hochschulen Baden-Württemberg Stuttgart und Mannheim. Die aufnehmenden Einrichtungen waren zum Teil unternehmensspezifisch. Studierende verbrachten ihre Praxisphase in Tochterunternehmen der beteiligten Firmen (HPE, ABB) und zum Teil in Fremdfirmen (ABB, DKFZ, HPE). Aufnehmende Länder waren Großbritannien, Frankreich, Malta, Irland, die Niederlande, Tschechische Republik, Spanien, Italien, Schweden, Rumänien, Dänemark, Bulgarien, Griechenland, Polen, Norwegen und Slowakai.Es geht allen Konsortialpartnern darum, für ihre Unternehmen Mitarbeiter auszubilden, die schon während ihres Studiums Auslandserfahrung erhalten und somit wichtige Kompetenzen zu erwerben. Sie können später in multikulturellen und -nationalen Projekten im In- wie im Ausland eingesetzt werden. Auslandsentsendungen stellen für diese Mitarbeiter zukünftig kein Hindernis dar. Es ist für alle beteiligten Unternehmen von großer Bedeutung, dass junge Mitarbeiter ihr berufliches Netzwerk vor allem auf internationaler Ebene aufbauen und erweitern können. Davon profitieren schlussendlich alle Beteiligten.Die aufnehmenden Einrichtungen im Ausland erhielten während der Mobilitätsphase interessierte und motivierte Mitarbeiter, über die sie auch Einblicke ins deutsche Ausbildungssystem gewinnen konnten. Die Teilnehmenden kamen aus den Bereichen BWL, IT, Medizinische Informatik (DKFZ) sowie Maschinenbau/Elektrotechnik/Mechatronik.