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EBBD BRiDGES
Start date: Jul 1, 2014, End date: Jun 30, 2015 PROJECT  FINISHED 

The main purpose of this application is to further develop the internationalisation of our bussiness college which started in 2008 with participating in a trial for vocational schools in Rhineland-Palatinate teaching bilingual business studies, thus preparing students for bilingual A-level exams, and was considerably promoted by our accreditation as an EBBD college in 2013 which allows us to grant our students the European Business Baccalaureate Diploma if they meet the required standards (see also http://www.eurobacdiploma.eu/en/). One of the EBBD standards requires that students need to successfully complete a high-qualitative work placement abroad. As we do not have experiences with both - providing EBBD programmes and organizing the required work placements - we need staff mobility for teachers, especially job shadowing in EBBD schools (Internationales Business College Hetzendorf/Wien and Andrássy Katolikus Középiskola in Hungary) or schools with a wide range of bilingual courses (e.g. IBB Niels Brock Business College, Copenhagen) and in organizations providing well organized and monitored work placements, which will be certified according to European standards (ECVET and Europass) by CSCS Pistoia, so that the participating students can meet the required standards and teachers can gain the necessary experience, improve their competences linked to teaching, provide a better quality of their work and activities for their students and increase the capacity to trigger changes in terms of modernisation and international opening within our college. We also hope they will further promote mobility activities for learners, increase their motivation and statisfaction in their daily work. A considerable boost of innovation is induced by participation at EfVET conferences (see vgl. http://www.efvet.org/), which is why we want to go to this year's conference in Porto. Besides EBBD in our upper secondary vocational education department we agreed upon mobility activities with one major local employer, BASF: apprentices for industrial clerks will work as interns in the social sector in order to gain soft skills in other areas than the ones provided by their professional background. That is why the project is called BRIDGES. This will be a first step towards increasing mobility of apprentices in our college. In this case we rely on partners in UK (Principia School for Language/Worcester and Sussex Downs College near Brighton) which are well experienced and connected to local chambers of commerce and companies, provide fitting work placements in the social sector and secure safe accomodation in host families. It is planned for 24 apprentices. Like CSCS with EBBD they will support, monitor and certify the students' work placements, newly implementing ECVET elements in this process. This mobility's focus is on developing personal and social competences as well as intercultural competences which could not be achieved during the students' apprenticeship. Besides students will increase their foreign language competences and employability. This also applies for the 4 students' EBBD work placements, who will be gaining initial work experiences abroad. As our college does not have any experiences with work placements abroad yet, one teacher shall be trained at CSCS, job shadowing well experienced trainers and discussing the used instruments (matching tools, language and intercultural preparation, monitoring and certification of the mobilities according to ECVET instruments/Europass). Due to the ambitious standards which have to be met in EBBD (especially CLIL for working in companies (presentation, participation in meetings) and training of intercultural competences) and the extension/adjustment of CLIL-lessons at our college in this context, job shadowing of teachers in Copenhagen (IBB programme of Niels Brock Business College), in Vienna (International Business College Hetzendorf) and Hungary (Andrássy Katolikus Középiskola) are planned. We want to achieve the implementation of newly acquired skills in EBBD-classes and bilingual programmes, the implementation of innovative teaching techniques whereever possible, sharing of experiences with colleagues and long-term fostering contacts with partner organizations, especially mentors, intercultural awareness – also for foreign students living in Germany - (changing mind sets and attitudes), promotion of mobility among both student and colleagues, encouraging more students to choose vocational instead of general upper secondary education because it provides better preparation for the job market and encouraging more students to go abroad for work placements, thus increasing their labour mobility, educating with more regard to international orientation and especially European participation based on the teachers’ own experiences - creating awareness of European Citizenship and inducing more cross country cooperation.
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