Erasmus Policy
The IES Mar de Alborán is a Secondary Comprehensive and Vocational State School allocated in Estepona, Málaga (Andalucía). It offers a full range of studies from lower and middle secondary education to higher secondary school (including official courses for adults in longlife learning programs leading to the Secondary Education Certificate and middle and higher education access schemes). The Vocational School comprises three areas of study: Electronics, Management and Finance and IT (the former only at middle level and the two later both at middle and higher education levels).
Since the academic year 2012/13 the management team has set among its objectives to incorporate the School to European programs and education projects.
This institution aims, by participating in European programs such as Erasmus+, to improve the overall education and professional training of our students and staff with European collaborative experiences. Our main objective is to give the opportunity for students to fulfill completely or partially credits included in their official catalogue in a foreign institution, giving special account to the final integrated project and the vocational training placement. Therefore, we wish to promote both student and teacher participation in the Programme in order to raise attainment levels and the relevance of our HVET and VET courses in the local and European labour market and establish educational and professional links as well as empowering enriching transversal skills.
The IES Mar de Alborán is currently adhered to the regional plan for the improvement of educational quality; and some of the target areas that we are working on and wish to boost via Erasmus+ are related to:
- Enhancing professional teaching competence
- The use of ICT and new technologies for collaborative learning
- Empowering the European and global dimension of teaching
- Improving the linguistic competence of students and teachers
Erasmus program participants.
Students who will participate in the Erasmus program are VET and HVET students in the three professional areas that our school works with. The sending school is responsible for selecting the students and staff undertaking mobility activities. The selection process will be clear and public; the selected candidates will be published on the school web page and notified in person.
The student and teacher profiles were discussed and approved on the meeting of the European Projects and Educational Mobility Commission of the School on 18/12/2015.
The successful candidate will be that of a responsible, motivated student with good academic standards and sufficient language competence to enable communication in everyday and professional situations. All applicants will undergo language and eligibility tests to choose the most suitable and will also have to agree upon the funding conditions and be prepared to sign up and keep to the Learning Agreement.
The VET teachers participating in job-shadowing or training mobilities must be committed to share and disseminate the experience on returning, they shall be actively involved in projects in the school and shall also have a minimum proficiency in English.
Thus, the school will promote both student and teacher participation in the Program in order to raise attainment levels and the relevance of our Vocational School in the local and European labor market. So we will be interested in partnerships with institutions that undergo a similar curriculum and professional organisations that may cater for emerging market demands and offer employability and enriching transversal skills. Any geographical area within the EU will be liable as long as it comprises with the prior requirements.
It is understood as a prerequisite that the reference language for liable partners should be English, French or Spanish.
Other criteria to be considered in the choice of partners will be:
– Diversity. We will consider favorably the partners that provide to our students diversity in language, culture, geographical origins, etc.
– Complementarity. Focused on contents, organization, experiences, etc..
– Added value. With regards to training, employability, quality, additional certifications, etc..
– Repercussion and image. Our partners can improve the image of the school, its students and the prestige of the teaching and degrees offered.
For our project partners, the potential and assets that our school can provide are:
– Its geographical area and climate
– The habitat itself.
– Privileged relations with local institutions.
– In the field of IT, we are integrated in the Cisco Networking Academy, comprising more than 10,000 schools with over 20,000 educators in 165 countries which provides training to one million students who use Cisco certified educational programs , that qualifies to teach, assess and issue industry certifications CCNA Discovery and Exploration versions at levels 1 and 2.
The responsibility for establishing mobility agreements corresponds to the School Board, prior opinion and elaboration by the School Commission of European Projects and Educational Mobility.
OUR CURRENT PARTNERS:
In order to meet our needs we have been looking for schools/organisations with which we can form long term relations and work together on a multitude of issues and levels. We also need partner countries that have a good level of English as we are aiming at becoming a leading bilingual school in our area, where international work becomes a natural way to obtain excellency in all aspects.
We are therefore forming a close relationship to three partners involved in different projects, in Sweden, Ireland and England.
Västerås stads Gymnasie- och vuxenutbildning: – http://www.vasteras.se
Västerås stads Gymnasie och Vuxenutbildning is part of the school administration of the local authority of the City of Västerås and organises upper secondary schools, including VET professional training. The city has 143000 inhabitants and is situated ap. 100 kilometres west of Stockholm. The organisation offers seventeen national programmes and works in close cooperation with the lower secondary schools of the city as well as with other providers of adult training, the local business community and the university.. The city has ongoing international projects on all school levels, and internationalisation is an important part of the political and organisational agenda for the educational system of the city.
We have started preliminary work with Västeras Educational Authorities, and have already had 4 preparatory meetings in Estepona to arrange a wide range of collaboration projects (with them and other institutions in the consortium led by the city of Västeras), such as:
- Receiving 2 technical students from their school, acting as ambassadors, to inform and promote links with our school. (October, 2015)
- Receiving 2 incoming vocational students for a 1 month work placement in Estepona. (April/May, 2015)
- Preparing, submitting applications and organising VET mobility projects to receive and host students in Estepona and Västeras for short (1 month) work placements. (2016-2018)
- Preparing, submitting applications and organising other K2 Strategic Assosiation Projects (2016—) chemes as well as a
Enniscorthy Enterprise & Technology Centre: – http://www.eetc.ie
Enniscorthy Enterprise & Technology Centre is a not-for-profit organisation which provides support for micro start-up businesses. It does so through the provision of incubation space for startups, mentoring and advice for individuals with business ideas and training for businesses and individual who wish to learn how to work in a micro business or run their own business more efficiently. It is ideally suitable to be an Erasmus+ partner because of the knowledge gained in working with micro enterprise and the training it provides both individually and for micro-enterprise networks. The centre runs a programme named the Certificate in Business Administration.
EETC has worked before with Västeras, and was interested in organising EU placements with their students, so we were introduced to one another and we are having constant contact with them to organise student and staff mobility projects, we have both applied for K102 Erasmus+ funding and are willing to collaborate in other international schemes and projects.
Churchill House Language School: – http://www.churchillhouse.com/
English Language School in Ramsgate, Kent with an ongoing 2 year collaboration with our HVET course in Administration and Finance. We have organised 3 student mobilities for job placements (April- June 2015 and 2016) and a jobshadowing for June 2016, under different funding schemes: Erasmus+ and grant applications from our Regional Government-Junta de Andalucía.
PLANNING AND PROJECT DEVELOPMENT.
In the process of participation in Erasmus mobility projects, the following phases will be held:
- – Comparative study of the curriculum to be recognized and / or validated, setting and scheduling learning outcomes for establishing equivalences.
- – Preparation of a draft project. Searching of partnership candidates.
- – Choice of partners. Adapting the curriculum selected for mobility.
- – Inclusion of revised teaching programs in the mobility project and its publication and widespread deployment.
Our School will choose a mentor or reference person for incoming students and teachers. This person will be responsible for providing support, guide and advice to the incoming students or teaching staff.
In addition, preparatory sessions will be held for outgoing students participating in mobility projects to establish a monitoring plan.
The OBJECTIVES of our participation in the Erasmus Program are:
1- To improve the quality of our vocational and higher education courses, raising attainment levels, professional profiles and employability.
2- To provide more enriching educational experiences to our VET and HVET students.
3- To increase the relevance of our Vocational School in the local and European labor market.
4- To improve our students´ and teaching staff´s professional, social and intercultural skills.
5- To raise the professional skills and career projections of our VET and HVET students and staff.
6- To enrich the personal and professional competence of our staff and students in a different country and socio-cultural context.
7- To inform the local and school community on the possibilities of our VET and HVET qualifications in order to promote these studies and reduce general and Vocational Education drop-out figures.