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Project 4CHANGE - a good practice example on CEEMET's New Skills Agenda for Europe

 

On CEEMET position paper based on the European Commission New Skills Agenda for Europe our project Industry 4.0 CHAlleNGE: Empowering Metalworkers For Smart Factories Of The Future (4CHANGE) is mentioned as a good practice example in matching digital skills to the labour market and curricula from professional schools. The project partners have analysed existing research evidence on the metalworkers profession-specific skills needs and identified specific industrial requirements:

  1. Advanced technology and digital skills due to increased need for engineers instead of manual workers;
  2. Robotics and CNC operation skills due to technology-driven innovation;
  3. Social and entrepreneurial skills due to need for highly motivated workforce to stay competitive.

The project innovations - developed Interactive training material and CNC Simulation software. Such digital training programme will be the first state-of-the-art interactive programme in the Baltic countries. These outcomes will also mark the next development stage in the German VET curriculum.

CEEMET feels that digital skills is a key issue in this area and needs to be regularly updated to reflect this. Building Digital skills coalitions in the Member States to come forward with proposals on skills, funded by the European Union, is a commendable initiative by the European Commission and a first step in this direction. At a national level, members of CEEMET are well placed to feed into the discussion on national digital skills strategies. Our project 4CHANGE “Industry 4.0 Challenge: Empowering Metalworkers For Smart Factories Of The Future” and 11 partners from Lithuania, Germany, Latvia and Estonia with expertise in the area of VET and its curricula aim to match skills and labour market needs. The goal is to achieve learning outcomeoriented VET curriculum, applying ECVET, that will cover many areas including the development of digital and entrepreneurial skills.

The aim of this New Skills Agenda for Europe initiative is to deal with the skills shortages in Europe and the following priority areas from the proposal have specific interest for the MET Sector:

Council Recommendation on Upskilling Pathways – New opportunities for adults

The review of the European Qualifications Framework (EQF)

The Digital Skills and Jobs Coalition

The Blueprint for Sectoral Cooperation on Skills

Making Vocational Education and Training (VET) a first choice