By the middle of April, student groups participating in this project had to detect external opportunities that could help their schools do their job better and give their students more benefits, knowledge and skills. Visual maps of the points they extracted are shared below and they tell a lot both about schools’ conditions and about their close social and economic surroundings.
After they successfully finished with defining internal weaknesses of their schools, our students had to notice and extract external opportunities (the “O” in SWOT). These are potential benefits outside schools, in their community, that could be reaped in order to give students better education. Some of the students grouped them having in mind what exact field of work or group would some external factors affect, while others listed them without any specific order.
This time, just like both times before – while making strengths and weaknesses list, each school used their own, same tool of choice for creating these digital lists and maps. After students submitted their tasks, we collected their links and screenshots (which are shared below) in Twinspace.
One thing that we noticed is that students from different countries wish to have and perceive as a good opportunity potential chance to do more hands-on work. And by “hands-on work” they don’t mean more practical classes (which is also preferable) – they want to have internships, practices in stores, factories, offices… These young people want to know how to do their work properly and want to get to know real-world working environment.
That is something in line with general perception, even among teachers, that students should learn more practical, useful skills as much and as often as possible. Also, if you bear in mind that all of the participating schools are vocational schools, it is easy and makes sense to conclude that, in general, everywhere you go, vocational education will lack and need more of experiential, practical learning.
Of course, there are other opportunities students noticed, each school having their own – according to their programs and location – which you can read below. Still, the point mentioned before should really be the first step into making VET schools better educational institutions and, therefore, being more desirable choice for continuing high school education.
”Emil Racovita” High School, Baia Mare, Romania
Bursa - Hamitler Toki MTAL, Turkey
Datca Ozcan Yılmaz MTAL, Turkey
FETHİYE ŞY ÖZGÜR ÖZEKİN MTAL, Turkey
Economy and Administration School Bjelovar, Croatia
Ereğli Uzun Mehmet Vocational and Technical Anatolian High School, Turkey
Lazar Edeleanu Highschool, Romania
Private school Futura, Croatia