#SELFIE_EU for Work-Based Learning: the pilot.
A closer look at three ETF partner countries
General Context
SELFIE, the free tool developed by the European Commission for schools to self-reflect on their digital readiness, is now being extended for work-based learning (SELFIE WBL).
The WBL pilot is being run in seven countries. In the EU, France, Germany, Hungary and Poland are piloting SELFIE WBL under the coordination of the European Forum of Technical and Vocational Education and Training (EfVET) and the Joint Research Centre (JRC). Three ETF partner countries – Montenegro, Serbia and Turkey – have been added in cooperation with the European Training Foundation (ETF).
We have talked to the three national experts coordinating the SELFIE WBL pilot locally about what stage they are at, what challenges they foresee and how they plan to manage them.
Current status
The pilot is furthest ahead in Serbia, where all schools have registered on the SELFIE WBL platform, have received access for the month of October and are now running the exercise. There are 14 schools enrolled, and 26 in-company trainers.
“WBL is so interesting for the companies because they have the chance to provide proper training for students in the early stages of their education, and prepare them better for that workplace. I think this is the major incentive for companies, because they are the final beneficiaries of all this. If they want to have good employees, they also have to invest in this relationship. So I think this is the key”, said national expert Ugljesa Marjanovic.
In Montenegro, the school year was postponed by one month, because of the pandemic – classes began in October. However, a network of pilot schools was established and the official kick-off of the SELFIE WBL pilot took place on the 15th of October.
“Even though the companies are attending these meetings from the position of the user, not administrator or organizer, it is important for them to understand the WHY behind this project, so they can be just as invested.” says national expert Dragutin Šćekić. “We also wanted to make companies think about their role in education from a different point of view – not just as service providers, but also as potential initiators of change.”
Given the small size of the country, all VET schools were able to run the initial SELFIE exercise, which makes it easier for schools to participate in the WBL pilot. 13 VET schools have been selected for this.
The pilot kick-off is planned for mid November in Turkey, where a lengthier approval process at national level was required, both due to the size of the country and to the structure of the education system. The Ministry of National Education has analysed a list of roughly 2000 schools that were eligible to run the SELFIE WBL pilot. Of the 2000, 30 schools have now been formally invited, all of whom accepted the invitation and are ready for the kick-off.
Industries
The Ministry of Education is in charge of the implementation of the SELFIE WBL pilot in Serbia. Their decision was to focus on ICT, because this is a priority sector for the country. The 14 schools cover 5 profiles:
- Information technology electricians,
- Air Traffic Information Systems Communication technicians,
- Digital Graphics technicians,
- Mechatronics technicians and
- Technicians for computer control of CNC machines (machines used in manufacturing, that moved according to pre-programmed software).
Serbian in-company trainers must be registered with the Chamber of Commerce, which makes this body a particularly active player in the SLEFIE WBL pilot. However, the trainers are all part of companies proposed by the schools running the study, in the context of their dual education collaborations.
The 13 VET schools piloting SELFIE WBL in Montenegro are all in tourism and hospitality – a high priority sector for Montenegro, which brings in roughly 20% of the GDP. In addition, Montenegro imports a lot of seasonal workforce in hospitality from other countries, according to Šćekić. The school selection was done in collaboration with the Ministry of Education.
The 30 partnering companies range from micro companies, such as hair salons, to big hotel chains like Hilton. The Chamber of Commerce is not involved, so the participating schools are inviting the companies they collaborate to delegate two trainers per company for the WBL pilot.
The Turkish VET schools invited to the SELFIE WBL pilot are mainly from the ICT sector (roughly 80%), but also others such as insurance or the clothing industry. Both students and teachers in ICT would have better access to devices and connectivity in case of another lockdown, says Yildirim, and would not depend on the school ICT lab.
Participating companies in Turkey are selected through the schools, based on the partnerships already existing through the WBL set-up. However, Soner Yildirim is also working on reaching out to other companies, with the aid of the Chamber of Commerce.
“They key element here are the in-company trainers. We are trying to invite as many of them as possible”, said Soner Yildirim.
Challenges
As the WBL pilot is being run in ICT schools, the results are expected to be above the national average in Serbia. In addition to being a Ministry decision, though, the choice also ensures a high success rate in case of a second lockdown, for the same reasons as in the case of Turkey – better access to devices and internet, and not depending on the school IT lab.
“The first challenge was technology itself”, said Ugljesa Marjanovic. “However, I don’t expect this will cause complete breakdowns in any school, but only delays, perhaps. There are, also, the other kind of people – the techy ones. The challenge with them is they don’t have the patience to read the instructions, they just want to click ahead.”
As far as the in-company trainers are concerned, Marjanovic expects that their biggest challenge will be finding the time to do the survey, which takes about 40 minutes.
“With a good collaboration between the school and the company, they can agree to run the SELFIE WBL survey more frequently, even quarterly. Then they can compare the results against objectives they had agreed previously. This is why SELFIE is so useful” said Marjanovic.
Dragutin Šćekić is concerned that the companies involved in the Montenegrin WBL pilot might face economic difficulties because of the pandemic, and therefore lose motivation, or, simply, have to re-direct all of their energy towards keeping their business alive. This is why the number of in-company trainers enrolled in the study is quite high (60), so that in case some drop out, the results will still be relevant.
“Predicting is not a very practical thing at the moment. Everything could happen. For now, hotels and restaurants are open and everything seems fine, but I want to think in advance and take precautions” Šćekić said.
Another observation Šćekić made was that, with an underlying feeling of angst across all of society, the quality of the answers might be affected.
“In this kind of testing it's very important to have a situation that is stable. Because external factors will not influence people’s thinking. But if you have some kind of new factors, that could possibly influence their thinking. I'll give a rough example. A teacher may be very tired when he is taking the SELFIE WBL survey because he has eight classes instead of four, because he's doing double shifts. To do the survey he needs to think about computers, and he will think, “I hate computers!”.
Šćekić hopes that, with a good kick-off meeting and proper support to SELFIE coordinators, this will not skew the survey results. By “good kick-off” he means a meeting that inspires “some kind of motivation for all participants to think outside of this moment, to think about the future and more in terms of development and a bigger perspective.”
Because of the nature of this study, one cannot monitor whether results are skewed by such factors while the exercise is going on – the data is owned and managed by the school, for the school.
Looking at Turkey, scale is often the challenge that first comes to mind: with 25 million students in all, the administration of even a pilot project brings up questions of time and people management, sample size, etc.
When asked about this, Soner Yildirim was positive that a well organized kick-off meeting and clearly communicated project details would make all the difference in running the pilot smoothly. This, he says, is because the schools were "very interested in being a part of the study".
The three country experts we talked to are the main contact points between Ministries, school leaders, Chambers of Commerce and companies.
They will be conducting in-depth studies of several cases once the SELFIE exercise has been completed, aiming to find out how the WBL module can be improved. Thus, SELFIE WBL will be optimised before roll-out at national level. The final study results are expected in December 2020.
"The latest version of SELFIE focusing on work-based learning brings vocational institutions and companies closer together. Together they can discuss how they could jointly use digital technology in the education and training provided," says Cesare Onestini, ETF director, in an interview recently published by the European Commission.
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