The action undertaken by the the project "Alternance (Sandwich Education) 2010"  is a response to the identified needs in terms of education & training capacities, a quantitative and qualitative improvement that will contribute to boost development. By structuring a network of higher education institutions to promote sandwich education in six countries focusing on primary, secondary and tertiary levels, the project enables many private and public sector players to contribute to the development of their country. Companies may contribute to training their workforce in a joint effort and in partnership with the University

Objective

The specific objective of "Alternance 2010" is to promote and consolidate the skills of partners in the area of “sandwich education”, and contribute to the creation of strong links between higher education institutions and the private sector, that may generate stable jobs and  highly-qualified employees.

Project target groups

• students, players in business life;? companies or production organisations, through their offer of work;
• public decision-makers, through the elaboration of development plans and by improving the legal and administrative frameworks;
• university lecturers, through the improvement of their knowledge

Proposed activities

•   Development and improvement of administrative management policies: any education process needs to be structured from the administrative, legal or organisational viewpoint.
•   Cooperation on teaching methods: the structuring of various models implies that each country or each HEE has adopted specific arrangements for the relationship between theoretical/practical training.
•   Visibility of sandwich training for students: Focusing the structuring actions on the ultimate beneficiaries is extremely important.
•   Exporting sandwich education to other fields and other countries: this is aimed at shared reflection about the best means and best methods to improving visibility among institutions, companies and the target population.

While working for the recognition of the network at regional level by institutions, by the private sector and the ultimate beneficiaries of these activities (employees and students), four activities will spread across the entire geographical front:

• Awareness raising of the institutional sector in the target countries: To deploy the project in the various countries, investigations and meeting are required with institutional players, to acquire the deepest possible knowledge of the quantitative and qualitative data.
• Awareness raising among secondary schools in the target countries: The consortium wishes to use its full geographic scope to pool its areas of influence.
• Making the business world aware of the issue of learning and sandwich education for employees.
• Development of technology transfer activities via the creation of an innovation research centre: this activity must allow more involvement of businesses and productive sectors.

The final series of activities:

• Setting up of a sandwich education system through continuing employee training.
• Consolidation and reinforcement of the current sandwich education system: tracking the implementation of recommendations, methodologies and lessons learnt from the first stages of the project.
• Searching for partnership in productive sectors: Making use of the lessons learnt from exchanges about the legal aspects to standardise all these partnerships in the medium-term.
• Creation of a department in charge of promoting and assisting business start-ups. This activity consists of implementing a strategy for promoting all kinds of business start-ups and in all sectors involved in the project.

Sustainability of the action

At the end of Alternance 2010, the consortium will have expertise in implementing sandwich education models and facilitating institutional networks involving academic and productive sectors.