Only few young people use the opportunity of gathering experience abroad during their initial vocational training period. Although the degree of mobility across borders amongst apprentices seems to be increasing of late, it still remains significantly lower than the target numbers passed by the European Commission in November 2011.
This is the result of a report that was compiled under the leadership of Prof. Dr. Regina Egetenmeyer, Junior Professor for Lifelong Learning at the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) in the context of the European "Internationalisation & Mobility in the students Curricula" project.
According to this report, in most countries of the European Union in 2006, less than one per cent of young people training for their first professional qualification worked abroad. Only Denmark, Finland and Cyprus made it above the one per cent level.
"The participant numbers as regards transnational mobility during initial vocational training are uniformly very low in Europe, but steadily on the increase. By comparison, the German numbers are rather in the upper realms", Sandra Rüffin from the Institute of Education at the JGU sums up the results. In their report, the involved scientists recommend to increasingly promote the topic of mobility at the educational institutions and businesses.
The significance of mobility and international experiences needs to enter into people's awareness and ought to be communicated in particular to enterprises and trainers. Moreover, the report recommends the implementation of improved instruments for registering transnational mobility, that is, instruments going beyond merely keeping count of participant numbers. It also recommends the organisation of more advanced foreign language courses for apprentices, to provide information and guidelines for those interested and to regulate the recognition of the obtained competences and capabilities.
The report was compiled in the context of the "INternationalisation & Mobility in the students Curricula" (INtheMC) project. In this project, eight partners from seven European countries cooperate towards the goal of increasing the participant numbers in vocational training mobility. The project is funded by the EU in the context of the Leonardo da Vinci Programme.