Apprentices mobility is the movement of students and teachers in vocational education or training (VET) to another institution inside or outside their own country to study or teach for a limited time.
When a student organizes a work stay in another country during holidays or a study break, may qualify as placements depending on the intent.
The practice of some companies to send employees abroad in foreign subsidiaries for a period of time in order to acquire specific competences may also be considered under this label.
The Comett programme from 1987 – also set up by the European Commission – grant aided placements of students in higher education in order to promote cooperation between universities and industry and to facilitate transfer of technology.
Action 4 of the Lingua programme from 1990 contained funding provisions for young people in VET to undertake placement periods abroad in order to improve foreign language proficiency.
A significant development at national level was the establishment by the Danish government in 1992 of the PIU programme, which gave people in initial vocational training not just the opportunity but the right to undertake all or part of their mandatory work placements in another EU or EFTA country.
However, the work situation is an artificially created one, there are trained supervisors present, and the group is composed of young people in the same age bracket.
Placements abroad can be a means for achieving intercultural understanding, learning how to live peacefully together in Europe and in the world and develop a sense of "European Citizenship" as opposed to a strictly nationalist outlook (corresponding to the initial thoughts of Jean Monnet when forging the European Coal and Steel Union in 1951 – as a means to promote peace and understanding in a war-torn Europe).
And we can continue to question the importance of experience abroad for apprentices and other young people in IVET, who often work in small and medium-sized enterprises with a regional focus.
the reality is that experience of mobility provides apprentices and IVET students with particular competences over and above those obtained from the vocational curriculum including communicative, social, meaning-related and change-related skills.
This corresponds to a focus on education and training as a motor for economic growth, and the aims of the Lisbon-declaration concerning the creation of a 'Europe of knowledge'.
In this case they are concerned with learning how to live and work in another country, how to become a 'migrant worker' willing and able to move across borders and thereby allay skills shortages in other Member States (corresponding to the thoughts in the Treaty of Rome from 1957 creating the European Economic Communities, where the free circulation of labour across borders was seen as an essential element in the economic development of Europe).
For individuals, mobility implies developing personal skills and competencies For vocational schools and training centres hosting students and apprentices and other young people in IVET from abroad creates an international atmosphere that brings benefits for the whole institution (e.g. inspiration of other students, learning language).
This lack of quantitative data makes it very difficult to arrive at any figures concerning both the participation rates and financing involved.
In the Netherlands 1 230 people benefited from a Leonardo mobility grant in the year 1999-2000 (total figure, including short study tours undertaken by teachers, instructors and human resource specialists).
The total number of people participating in transnational mobility activities in VET in the same period, however, is registered by the BISON monitoring report as close to 7000 (6877).
Unfortunately we cannot assess the exact amount spent on placements abroad from this programme, since the funds are allocated as lump sums to educational establishments for broad 'internationalization' purposes.
Measuring the factors such as the numbers of applications received may give us a rough estimate of this activity in at least one Member State, but only in initial vocational training, where spontaneous mobility is likely to be low for reasons of age.
Almost equally impossible to assess are the activities that are undertaken as pilot projects within programmes that on the surface have nothing to do with the issue of placements abroad.
In this project (duration March 1999 – May 2000) young unemployed persons from the Brandenburg region in Germany were sent on one year placements in other European countries with a view to increasing their employability.
Given the scope of activities, it is strange to note that studies on the qualitative aspects of placements abroad as a didactic tool in the context of VET are sparse.
Very few evaluations of mobility programmes and projects have been undertaken at European or national level, and even fewer of these concentrate on the learning aspects.
Valorisation is not the same as traditional evaluation or impact assessment, but focuses mainly on the achievements of the programme with a view to formulating recommendations for improvements and future priorities.
Some work, however, has been done on organisational matters, notably on legal and administrative barriers, culminating with the commission's Green Paper on obstacles to mobility from 1996.