International Cooperation & Development

WorldSkills Europe provides a European platform where youth, educators, industry and governments can meet, learn and develop skills together.

The WorldSkills Movement: 2 Organisations, one goal

Using the same important instrument; a biannual skills competition but on a global stage, WorldSkills International raises awareness about the value of skills and the recognition skilled people deserve.

Working together, both WorldSkills Europe and WorldSkills International benefit from each other in building a stronger message. The organisations exchange knowledge in order to improve and modernise skills competitions as well as events as a whole. Besides that, they work together to improve collective PR and Communications efforts.

Erasmus+

WorldSkills Europe stimulates & advises members in the possibilities of the Erasmus+ Programme.

Erasmus + provides grants for a wide range of actions and activities in the fields of education, training, youth and sport. The programme gives opportunities to students, trainees, staff and volunteers to spend a period abroad to increase their skills and employability. It supports organisations to work in transnational partnership and to share innovative practices in the fields of education, training and youth.

For more information and projects please see Erasmus+.

Tosca Erasmus +

Under the heading of the Life Long Learning programme ERASMUS +, sub category Strategic Partnerships for vocational education and training. Key Action 2: ‘Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices’, Skills Netherlands and WorldSkills Europe are participating in a project called TOSCA.

The acronym TOSCA stands for: Transferability of Skills, Competition and Assessment Standards for better recognition of skills within EU.

Project partners:

1. Leading Partner: Valsts izglitibas satura centrs  (VISC, Latvia),
2. Foundation Innove (Estonia),
3. Foundation Skills Netherlands (the Netherlands),
4. European Skills Promotion Organisation (WorldSkills Europe, the Netherlands)

Project duration: 3 years (1 September 2014 – 31 August 2017)

Project budget: 450,000.00 EUR.

The aim of the project
The project aims to develop a common methodology for setting up high-quality skills competitions at national and international level. To achieve that a common terminology and working method will be developed and a number of existing national standard specifications will be analyzed and compared. From there on TOSCA Standard Specifications of the jobs will be described which forms the basis for Skills competitions. Finally test models, including assessment methodologies and assessment schedules, will be developed for competitions. This all will be applied and tested in national competitions of the countries concerned. On the basis of evaluation the project outcomes will be adjusted and prepared for use in the EuroSkills competitions. All products will be stored in a database and made available for all WSE-partners.

Selected occupations
The project focuses on the occupations Fashion Technology, Graphic Design, Web Design, Joinery, Woodcraft Technology, Restaurant Service and Cooking.

Project organization
Latvia is the leading country in the TOSCA project. There is a Steering Group installed from where representatives of the project partners can monitor the activities. For every country a country manager is responsible for the input and coordination of the national experts. Each partner country provides one expert per job and has a leading role for one of the professions. Netherlands is leading for Joinery/Woodcraft Technology.

Contracts
Collaboration for the deployment of Dutch experts has been obtained from Summa College, Deltion College, ROC of Twente and HMC_Amsterdam

Products

1) A common description of the professional content (standard specifications) of the different professions
Experts have agreed a common strategy and approach, the various standard specifications from the participating countries analyzed and compared to each other. This has led to a common shared description for the various professions.

2) A format for the preparation of test projects and a toolkit for the development of competitions
For the delivery of this product the project basically benefits from the by Skills Netherlands developed Competition registration system (CRS).  This CRS will be prepared specifically for TOSCA to make international use possible. This ensures that the development of competitions in the different countries is based on the same structure and working methods.

3) A competition database
Also here the CRS will be modified and extended  with a separate database to store the developed test projects and preferably linked with the WorldSkills Europe database.

4) A final advertising seminar
The project results will be presented during a seminar in Latvia in August 2017.

For more information please contact the contact person for the Dutch participation, Fred van Koot via vankoot@skills-netherlands.nl

VIP Program

The EuroSkills VIP Program is designed to bring leaders together from around Europe for a productive, informative and eye-opening program with EuroSkills as its centerpiece. This program will bring you face-to-face with the leaders of today and tomorrow in global industries, European governments and decisionmakers in educational environments.