To promote the benefits of work-based learning and to raise further awareness for quality assurance in work-based learning, each project partner developed two short videos including a brief and concise success story or good practice of apprenticeship or other forms of work-based learning. As in many other areas, the Covid-19 pandemic has led to delays in the BEQUAL.app project within all partner countries. We are therefore all proud to now present the videos. You can find all the videos on the BEQUAL platform (http://bequal.info/).

As the situation of work-based learning is slightly different through all the partner countries, the partners were given the freedom to develop their own unique message to present in the videos. All videos were developed in strong collaboration with professional film teams. The aim of this article is to give you a glimpse behind the scenes and to present the ideas behind the videos.

University of Regensburg, Germany

We already started planning the videos in November 2019. As one of the central challenges in German VET we see the shortage of skilled young people and missing applicants especially in the STEM- and healthcare sector. Many companies, who offer a lot of different apprenticeship positions, have currently great problems to find motivated and competent young recruits. Therefore, we decided to address young pupils near graduation as our target group to motivate them to apply for apprenticeships within these fields. For the realisation of the videos we built a cooperation with a company in our region offering apprenticeship positions mainly in the STEM-sector. Together we developed the idea that apprentices currently learning and working within this company will talk about their experience, the reasons why they decided for an apprenticeship, what they like and what they would recommend young people currently searching for a profession. For the two videos we decided for two different training professions, with two apprentices per profession reporting on their experience. To make the videos as authentic as possible we only communicated central questions and ideas to the apprentices and let them develop the detailed content of the videos themselves. We were very happy with all the ideas they came up with and finally recorded the videos within one day in the companies’ learning centres.

Kaunas Chamber of Commerce, Industry and Crafts (KCCIC), Lithuania

In Lithuania work-based learning, especially apprenticeship is still not well known among young people and companies.  More than 10 years at national, regional and local levels are being developed different initiatives to promote the idea of apprenticeship. Readiness and motivation of VET schools, companies and young people are on the top of VET agenda at policy level since 2014. These videos were planned as an encourage message to companies and young people to go for work-based learning. To find really successful apprenticeship examples and to shoot it in the pandemic situation was a bit challenging task. Project team has big hope that key message will be disseminated wide.

Finance & Banking, Organisational & HR development Association (Effebi), Italy

Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the original idea of focusing on concrete examples and experiences at school level has been slowed by the impossibility to meet face to face and by the schools’ need for adaptation at this forced digitalization process. Nevertheless, we decided to collect testimonials and successful experiences of internships and traineeships, shedding lights on companies.

Companies, in fact, were unprepared to arrange effective solutions for ensuring continuous quality training and support for their apprentices and trainees during the current crisis, with a subsequent serious emotional and financial impact on the work-based learning system in all European countries.

In order to underline the benefits of work-based learning, especially for companies, and catalyse the re-start of the connected programmes, we decided to give voice to Filippo Abramo, to present practical advantages of work-based learning and to Erica Rizziato, to provide also empirical evidence. Filippo Abramo is the President of Federmanager, the Italian Association of Management Organisations and has worked in several big Italian and multinational companies. Thanks to his extensive experience in business management and HR, he had the chance to take part to a WBL project related to the financial and banking sectors: in his interview he mentions as first benefit the possibility for students to approach to professionalism. Erica Rizziato is a Researcher for the National Council of Research who tested new frameworks of managing internships with some educational institutions in Italy.

As a result – she said - at the end of the project the students felt to be real protagonists of the work-based learning with positive impact on both companies – which acquired new approaches – and students, who acquired new competences and in most of cases have been hired by the companies.

Agency for Vocational Education and Training and Adult Education (ASOO), Croatia

The main idea behind making a video of successful practice in Croatia was to find quality company that has long tradition and has dealt with student apprentices through school programs and mentorships.

Obvious choice was hair salon, because hairdressing is often considered second-choice for students, even amongst VET schools. However, following latest trends in beauty industry, we can see from the first hand that this craft is now considered to be one of more propulsive and attractive ones.

The owner of the salon, Mrs. Jagoda Dundur, has been in hairdressing business for more than 30 years. She maintains her business by surrounding herself with apprentices and by transmitting her knowledge and experience in order to keep her hairdressing salon following latest hairdressing trends.

Stories like hers will serve to inspire all future apprentices and craft owners to invest in their biggest resource – human knowledge and expertise.

Best regards,

The BEQUAL.app Team