The CIFP Tartanga LHII Integrated Vocational Training Centre offers courses in Audiovisual, Electronics-Electricity, Environmental Chemistry and Health, Informatics, Business Administration and Management and Social Integration. In some of these courses, the educational provision is multilingual. The students, in addition to the two official languages of the Basque Autonomous Community, use English to acquire skills.
Our institution’s international strategy is part of a structured plan within our process management system. We are involved in the development of quality systems and have received the following certificates: Certificate of Quality Management (ISO 9011/2008), Silver Q according to the EFQM framework, and the National Award for Quality Management in teaching-learning processes in 2005. Furthermore, we develop our environmental management through the Ekoscan program.
At CIFP Tartanga LHII, we consider internationalisation a key priority in its innovation process and it is part of the strategic plan designed to improve the quality of our education programs. The internationalisation process involves collaboration between students, teachers and administrative staff.
Our centre participates in different international projects within the Lifelong Learning project. The main objective is to develop a learning-teaching process closely related to the social/occupational demand of the European and international labour market. We are interested in international projects as a means of learning through the transfer of knowledge from the experiences and good practices of our European partners, both institutions as well as companies. We also try to enable participants to develop their language skills and improve their understanding of the social and economic culture of the host country.
We have extensive experience in Lifelong Learning Programmes. We have been involved in different types of international projects over the last decade such as our own Eranwork Youth project for innovation transfer, with partners from Sweden and Italy among others. The main aim of this project was to give students who had started their own business the opportunity to innovate and develop their projects in European companies and implement their acquired knowledge.
We have also opened our doors to foreign students to undertake an internship in companies close to us. In recent years we have received students from the audio-visual field, mostly. We have also received students from Chile to take part in a full academic year course called “Business and Finance Management in Small and Medium Enterprises”. Finally, teachers from the centre have taken part in mobility programmes such as Vetpro, Comenius and Academia.
- a) We choose our partners according to the needs of the students and staff at the centre. We pay particular attention to the quality of the mobility offered by our partners. Our partnership is based on mutual trust and interest and long-term cooperation. Our partners come mainly from vocational training centres and companies. We also have the opportunity to choose new partners through the consortia with which we work: Ikaslan and Confebask.
- b) When selecting our partners, we take into account their geographical and linguistic coverage. We maintain our strongest bonds with European countries such as U.K., Ireland, Bulgaria, Finland, Sweden, Portugal and Italy, although we are open to all the countries of the European Union.
- c) Our most important objectives are:
– Increase the ratio of student mobility, including students with specific needs of various kinds. Currently, 10% of our students complete their internship abroad following the guidelines of our strategic plan.
– Promote and support student mobility for studies. We are open to this possibility for the future
– Promote and recognise teacher mobility projects between higher education institutions to teach or do an internship. The general objectives of these programmes are to acquire or use knowledge, skills and qualifications to facilitate personal development in a professional context. Our institution pursues the excellence of teachers in their professional development through knowledge transfer. They also have the possibility of building a wider education network within the European Union. The teacher will have a recognition of his mobility upon completion.
– Facilitate the development of foreign language proficiency both to teachers and students through the multilingual project promoted by the Basque Government in vocational training, so that they have more opportunities to participate in European projects. This programme also gives European students and teachers the chance to visit us and participate in our centre.