7th European School Student Convention: “Inspiring!”
Between the 11th and 15th December 2011 OBESSU’s 7th European School Student Convention “New Skills for New Schools: Students, Education & Training and work” was held in Oslo, Norway. There was a total of 48 people and 19 OBESSU organisations present from 14 different countries. We spent five days discussing among others Vocational Education and Training (VET), apprenticeships and guidance and leading up to a Resolution on the topics!
The five days were very exciting indeed with many great discussions and activities! The first day was spent with ice-breakers, contact games and initially exploring what VET is! This lay the foundations for the next four days for the participants to understand the different VET-related topics, and introduce them to the work that OBESSU and its partners do on VET. There was also a session dedicated on apprenticeships where four organisations presented examples from their countries, and later a discussion was held on what is good and bad in apprenticeships as they are today, discussing around various statements. These were taken from the “Quality charter on internships and apprenticeships” which OBESSU was involved in drafting.
In the evening an intercultural evening was held at the SSUN Office where everyone brought something to eat or drink from their home country to share with the other participants, and there were even some national costumes!
On the second day the participants had a chance to go even deeper into the topic. Things such as the labour market and student guidance were discussed in interactive parallel sessions. On this day there was also the launch of OBESSU’s VET campaign: “Claim your Voice: Stand up for Vocational Education and Training!”. Not only was the campaign and its timeline presented, but participants got to contribute to the campaign by brainstorming and sharing ideas, looking what they could do in their individual countries and how they could cooperate with one another, and even make campaign pledges. One group even made a short promotional video as an example!
Everyone was excited on the morning of the third day since we got to visit a VET school in Oslo! Here we got a very good understanding of how the VET system works in Norway, and to see first-hand the students in the classrooms, and ask all kinds of questions!
In the afternoon there was a very heated discussion about public and private education without reaching any greater consensus since there are such vast differences on what this means, and entails across Europe. And lastly ‘who should represent VET students?’ was discussed where 4 innovative models were drawn up.
The last day was largely directed to the writing of the resolution. This was extremely productive where VET was clearly delineated and what OBESSU demands was stated. A first draft has been drafted, which will soon be revised and then presented to the OBESSU General Assembly in May!
So keep your focus on VET and follow the campaign! We need your commitment, enthusiasm and ideas to make a change! The 7th School Student Convention in December was a great success and all participants returned home having learned new things, become motivated by seeing what others are doing, and full of new ideas!
Complet session summarties 7th ESSC
Written by Anna Widegren, OBESSU Policy and Project Officer
