Istanbul Valiligi / City of Istanbul: 2019-1-TR01-KA202-077191

Erasmus+ VET KA2 Strategic Partnership (2019-2021) TR, AT, DE, EL, ES. NO

European education and training systems continue to fall short in providing the right skills for employability, and are not working adequately with business or employers to bring the learning experience closer to the reality of the working environment. These skills mismatches are a growing concern for European industry’s competitiveness (Industrial Policy Communication Update COM, 2012, page 582). By 2020, 20% more jobs will require higher level skills. Education needs to drive up both standards and levels of achievement to match this demand, as well as encourage the transversal skills needed to ensure young people are able to be entrepreneurial and adapt to the increasingly inevitable changes in the labour market during their career.

The scope and pace of reforms needs to be scaled up so high-quality skills can support both growth and jobs (EU Commission Rethinking Education: Investing in skills for better socio-economic outcomes, 2012, p:2). Skills mismatch refers to a discrepancy between the demand and supply of skills on the labour market. In other words, a situation in which the skills sought by employers are different from the skills offered by jobseekers or workers. In order to achieve excellence in VET, curricula must be systematically renewed, delivery must be constantly modernized and businesses, especially SMEs, must be actively involved. VET must be able to react to the demand for advanced vocational skills, tailored to the regional economic context.

Within this context given, this project aims to develop a platform through which vocational education systems and the labour market, especially the SMEs, communicate interactively, while one side voting for/valuing the skills they need and the other side, that’s the vocational systems answers by updating the current curriculum. Also, the training content developed on skills analysis and mapping through the ECVET Skills Platform is considered to serve the quality of vocational education and training systems, giving the experts responsible for teaching technical skills the mission of teaching also the personal and conceptual skills.

Target group of the project is vocational education and training institutions, teachers/trainers in VET, SMEs, employers, decision makers, non-governmental organizations, and trainees. It aims at creating a channel among the members of the target group to keep them updated about the needs and requirements of the firms and the provided skills at educational institutions.

EUROMASC is responsible for IO3: ECVET Skills Value Platform. Our work will consist of developing an online platform. On this platform, there will be four main parts for vocational education institutions, representatives of labour market, teachers and trainers, and students. These four different users of the platform will have their own user/subscriber information given to use the platform.

Voting for the skills, analysing the skills, developing curriculum and contents will be possible with the artificial intelligence of the platform. The fact that Skills Mismatch results in unemployment and that labour market demands the skills that have the capacity to produce a value in the sector will lead this platform be the added value of this project.

This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This publication reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.