LdV Partnership Projects

Introduction

A Leonardo da Vinci Partnership is a framework for small-scale cooperation activities between organisations working in the field of vocational education and training ("VET") which will be working on themes of mutual interest to the participating organisations. Projects can focus more on the active participation of trainees, while others will concentrate on the cooperation between teachers, trainers or VET-professionals. The cooperation may not only include VET schools or institutions but also enterprises, social partners or other VET stakeholders. They can cooperate at national, regional or local level, but also at sector level, such as within VET-fields or economic sectors.
Partnership projects will fill a gap in the existing Leonardo da Vinci actions, i.e. the pure mobility projects and the bigger transfer of innovation projects, as they allow for cooperation in VET beyond mobility activities without, however, demanding large scale cooperation involving big budgets as in the Transfer of Innovation. Partnerships could also be used to continue to cooperate on results achieved in a previous project or be a first step towards a mobility of transfer of innovation project.
Partnerships are an excellent way of enabling peer learning activities for the use of common tools as described in the Helsinki Communiqué, such as transparency, EQF, ECVET, quality assurance, excellence of skills, competences for key sectors.

Aims and Objectives – topics for co-operation

LdV Partnerships follow the objectives of the LdV programme as set out in Article 15.1 of the Programme Decision, which reflect the general political goals of VET policy at European level. This includes the objectives linked to the Copenhagen process and the Helsinki declaration. The main priorities for VET as they have been reviewed in the Helsinki Communiqué in December 2006 set an excellent framework for LdV partnerships:
Improving the attractiveness and quality of VET
Development and implementation of common tools for VET
Strengthening mutual learning
Taking all stakeholders on board.
The priorities for LdV-Partnerships in the draft call for proposals 2008-2010, such as presented to the Committee for its meeting on 12 June 2007, address the two following topics:
- cooperation between VET institutions, enterprises, and/or social partners
- cooperation between VET stakeholders at national, regional and local level or at sector level to ensure their active involvement in the implementation of the Copenhagen process, as foreseen in the Helsinki communiqué.
More specifically, LdV partnerships will be differentiated from the partnership actions in the Comenius and Grundtvig programme on the basis of the content of the activities, which have to be clearly VET related. A second particularity of LdV partnership will be the strive towards the opening towards other stakeholders than just VET schools, such as enterprises, social partners, regional, local or even national decision makers.
The following examples of topics which could be covered within a LdV partnership are based on the Helsinki communiqué reflecting present priority topics in common VET policy:
Development of guidance and advice on VET;
Opening VET to flexible pathways and create better conditions for transition to working life;
Reinforce or create closer links of VET with working life;
Promoting the recognition of non-formal and informal learning;
Responding to the needs of the labour market, particularly of SMEs, anticipation of skills needed in labour market;
Improve the qualification of teachers and trainers;
Support the implementation of Quality assurance in VET
Cooperate in the area of transparency of VET systems (i.e. ECVET, EQF, Europass…)
Support the development of national qualifications frameworks in relation to EQF
Cooperate to test and apply common concepts developed at European level with the aim to achieve a spreading at the level of the actors “on the ground”

Examples of activities

The LdV NA agreed that no distinction should be made between different Partnership types in LdV, in order to keep the application simple. The single Partnership type can however cover a lot of different activities. They can be centred on the trainees and their skills-development, they can address the qualification of teachers and trainers, exchange of experiences, mutual learning or even involve the institutional and/or VET field level. They can cover for example:
· Exchanging teaching staff and/or trainees
- application of common training contents in VET institutions
- exchange of staff and trainees involved in project activities
- active cooperation between teacher, trainers and trainees
· Producing something in common
- making of technical objects, constructions, tangible products
- integration of theory and practice
- active cooperation between teacher, trainers and trainees
· Cooperating on specific subjects
- common work on training contents and topics, European dimension included
- integration of theory and practice
- exchange and transfer of experience and good practice in training methods and contents
- common development of teaching and training methods
· Cooperating within a VET-field or economic sector
- common work on training contents and topics, European dimension included
- exchange and transfer of experience and good practice in training methods and contents
- common development of teaching and training methods
- exchange of staff and trainees involved in project activities

Results / outcome

LdV Partnership will produce an outcome or results which allow later dissemination and further application of the results of the cooperation. This can be descriptive or tangible, take the form of a common report, a conference, a CD, a tangible product worked out by trainees, a training concept in a specific VET field, ...etc. The partnership results will be delivered with the final report and their quality assessed for the payment of the final balance.
It is not sufficient that a partner just organises a special event concerning the subject and exchanges the report with the partners without any mobilities. It is important that a true and active cooperation takes place between the partners on the subject covered by the partnership.

Possible partners

It is important to note that the partners in an LdV partnership are not limited to VET schools. The participation of other stakeholders such as enterprises or social partners has, on the contrary, to be encouraged, in order to achieve the goal of increasing the quality of training as well as the link between training content and labour market needs. Possible partners can thus be VET institutions, training organisations, enterprises, social partners, decision makers, stakeholders, associations, economic sector representatives.

Conditions

1. duration
LdV partnerships have a duration of 2 years.
2. size of partnership
They must have at least 3 partners from 3 different countries, at least one of which is an EU Member State.
3. level of grants
The grant will be paid as a flat-rate amount. The level of the grant is based on the number of “mobilities” which will at least be realised in the period of the partnership by each of the partners. It is clear that the main objective of the partnership is not the mobility itself but the content work developed between the partners. The mobilities constitute the indicator for fixing the grant level and cannot be compared to the traditional LdV mobility projects.
The Committee for the Lifelong Learning Programme has decided to align the maximum flat-rate grant amounts for LdV Partnership to Comenius partnership grant levels:
– For minimum 4 mobilities per partner => 10.000 Euro per partner.
– For minimum 8 mobilities per partner => 15.000 Euro per partner
– For minimum 12 mobilities per partner => 20.000 Euro per partner
– For minimum 24 mobilities per partner => 25.000 Euro per partner
Any revision of the minimum numbers of mobilities should be agreed between the three sub-programmes, Leonardo, Comenius and Grundtvig.
The National Agencies will fix the national levels for the grants paid to the partners from their countries respecting the maximum limits foreseen.
The LdV NA have agreed not to apply National Priorities to LdV Partnerships.

Selection process

The LLP Committee also endorsed the principle of applying the same selection procedure for LdV partnerships as for Comenius and Grundtvig, i.e. based on the new method of a quality assessment only in the country of the coordinating organisation. As stated above, LdV NA agreed not to apply national priorities because this would have the consequence of a second assessment round on national priorities in the respective NA
It is of great importance that common standards for evaluation will be fixed and applied by all National Agencies. The experts evaluating the proposals must apply the same guidelines and the same marking system. This is necessary to ensure that all applications are assessed on the basis of the same criteria in all participating countries. Mutual confidence on the respective assessments is very important, because they will have an influence on the partner institutions benefiting from a grant in the different countries. The selection process must be as transparent as possible and mutual information between NA must be ensured.
The details of the selection procedure and the underlying principles will be defined in a separate NA working group covering Comenius, Leonardo da Vinci and Grundtvig.

Budget available for partnership actions

Partnerships will be financed within the available budget for decentralised actions: NA1 procedure (mobility and partnerships) and NA2 procedure (transfer of innovation). The distribution of the budget between the NA1 and NA2 and between the participating countries will be decided by the LLP Committee. On the whole, LdV decentralised actions will profit from an increase of around 9 % compared to 2007 (total of approx. 226 million including Turkey and the EEA countries).
In order not to penalise the traditional LdV actions (mobility and transfer of innovation projects), the LdV NA propose to use in the first year of this new action only the “fresh money”, i.e. to broadly use the foreseen budget increase for decentralised LdV actions (NA 1 and NA 2) for financing partnerships in 2008.
In order to ensure a critical mass of available budget in the participating countries, it is recommended that between 5 and 10 % of the NA 1 budget should be reserved for partnerships in each country.

Coherence and complementarity within LLP

A common NA-Commission working group representing Leonardo da Vinci, Comenius and Grundtvig has been established so as to ensure the consistency and complementarity across the partnership actions of the three programmes. This is also important in order to ensure that the LLP is promoted as an integrated programme. The first tasks of the working group will be to specify the new selection procedure, develop the different application forms, agree on common eligibility and award criteria, develop the checklists, and follow-up the process of developing and implementing the new procedures.


Delectati-va cu !