BHC21

Boosting Human Capital in the 21st Century
Priority Axis
Technological and Social InnovationSpecific objective
Social Innovation
Lead partner
POM West-VlaanderenContact
Date de début
01/04/2019Date de fin
31/01/2023Project budget
3 760 208 €ERDF amount
2 256 125 €ERDF rate
60%À propos
Common challenge
Unemployment rates of low-skilled people (level 1-2 in the EU Qualification Framework) in the 2 Seas region remain high, while there is a continuously growing number of operational job openings amongst others in the manufacturing sector. A study of DG Employment and Social Affairs (2015) mentions that a common cause is skills mismatch, either because there are not enough jobseekers with the necessary skills to fill open vacancies or because job requirements by employers do not fit with the competences of jobseekers. This study advises EU members to train the (un)employed. However, learnercentred training is underused in the manufacturing industry, training doesn’t account for barriers to learning experienced by low-skilled people (LSP) and fails to provide solutions to overcome these challenges (Nielson, 2011). Therefore vocational training services for the manufacturing sector in the 2 Seas Region need modernisation by combining expertise of work and education (Marope et al., 2015).
Overall objective
Main outputs
Cross border approach
Main Achievements
For WP1 local co-creation sessions have been held in the spring months. In France, the partners have organized a second successful session for the LSP (the first one took place already in 2019), with the collaboration of external stakeholders. Also the Flemish partners have experienced a positive collaboration with the observing partner VFU. This way, existing tools of VFU have been customized and implemented in the pre-training. In UK, a first cohort of LSP has attended the programme. Tavistock has elaborated an extensive training/coaching programme. The program in UK was interrupted in March and restarted again in August. However, a positive thing is that Tavistock was able to run an evaluation of the group relation method. After running the local co-creation sessions, the 3 regions have held several cross-border focus meetings to clarify and make agreements around the common framework? Based on this a draft version 1.0 of Chapter 1 has been elaborated. Despite the Covid restrictions, the partners from UK and Flanders have been able to run the tests (Output 1,2, and 3 for WP1), back-to-back with the vocational training though with far less trainees than originally planned. The French partners have also made all the preparations to run the pre-training but due to the combination with activities from WP2 (which are not yet ready), they have postponed this for 2021.
For WP2 the partners have made preparations for the purchase/development of ILT’s ans in some cases, also run the tests. In collaboration with an external partner, VDAB has developed a state-of-the art VR-application. In addition to this, an instruction video and on-line course have been developed. The tools have been tested twice (Output 1, 2). Also the partners in UK have offered 2 training programs (Output 3 and 4) with the VR-welding installation, an instruction video and an online assessment tool. The French partners have a clear idea about the tools they want to work with and make the last preparations for their development. They will run the tests in 2021. Based on the input of all regions, the Flemish partners have worked intensively on the decision tree. This is conceptually ready bus still needs some more finetuning before launching it to the companies.
At this point of time, preparations are being made in all regions for the start of the pilots.