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Developing Overseas Skills Experience
Start date: Jun 1, 2015, End date: May 31, 2017 PROJECT  FINISHED 

Global literacy and cross cultural skills are increasingly recognised as commodities essential to the global economy. National performance indicators substantiated by The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) show that England is behind most of its European counterparts in terms of both literacy and numeracy attainment. As one of the leading Further Education establishments in the country, South Devon College (SDC) is ambitious for its learners to achieve their highest potential. Whilst SDC has invested significantly in improving capacity for teaching English and Maths, it recognises that global literacy is not just about the skills of reading, writing and maths and wants to improve learners' ability to communicate effectively with a variety of audiences and to interpret information and apply it appropriately to the situation or setting.SDC has, therefore, highlighted an important need to develop more internationally relevant curriculum and generate more cultural impact to better prepare our learners with International Employability Skills to be able to compete with learners from other nations and make a meaningful contribution to the global economy.The main activities within our Developing Overseas Skills Experience Project will be two flows of student mobilities for two weeks to our partner organisations in France and Sweden with work placement activities. In addition, one flow of staff mobilities will take place in Year 1 to each country for work shadowing and curricula development for Automotive, Marine and other Vocational tutors with literacy and numeracy specialisms.The main areas we wish to develop through this project are:- Our teaching methods and resources to improve skills in literacy, numeracy and critical thinking – recognised as key employability skills which enable people to apply skills to different contexts, solve problems, use their initiative and work independently;- Our methods of working with industry to better inform curriculum developments and respond to and anticipate sector skills needs;- Ensuring an international context and dimension is present throughout the learner journey at SDC;- To covert existing international relationships to partnerships with knowledge transfer and innovation outcomes for staff, and cultural experiences and work placements for learners;- To cement a network of international contacts from which to grow and generate sustainable international collaboration;- To pilot the introduction of relevant foreign language teaching alongside selected vocational education training.SDC has a mission 'to inspire its community through learning for all' and has an entirely learner-centric focus to enable every learner to achieve their best potential.The main objectives for the participants are to:- develop their competences through the acquisition of skills and experience- improve their personal development and employability in the European labour market- develop their cultural awareness and improve social understanding of another country- broaden horizons by breaking down perceived barriers that may limit learners’ aspiration- provide further professional development opportunities for staff through work shadowing experiences- understand other teaching methodologies for staff to improve our curriculum outcomes for English and Maths.- improve progression levels to higher levels/Higher EducationThe expected impact on the participants is that 56 students will have undertaken a mobility to our partners in either France or Sweden that would not have been possible without the support of the Erasmus+ project. Each individual through this enrichment programme will have developed a Europass CV. This will record the activities and achievements of their visit. Ultimately this will lead to improved confidence, aspirations and employment on completion of their course.Through the staff mobilities, the impact will be that 6 staff will have improved and added to their personal and professional development. This in turn will benefit their students through improved approaches and practices to embed Maths and English across the college curricula; and improved employer engagement to inform curricula development and employment pathways. For the Automotive and Marine staff the impact will be to develop the curricula and introduce new methods to make it relevant for employability in the international arena; thus benefiting the employability and opportunities for their students in the short and long term. The improvement of attainment for students with Functional Skills is a high priority for the UK government and, by seeking to develop good practice from others, we would ultimately see the desired impact to try and improve the OECD ranking of the UK in the long term through improvements to teaching methods.

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