Kildare and Wicklow ETB Newsletter Issue 9 Inclusion | Page 12

‘Promoting inclusion means stimulating discussion, encouraging positive attitudes and improving educational and social frameworks to cope with new demands in education structures and governance.’ UNESCO Policy Guidleines on Inclusion in Education

Through KWETB Erasmus+ projects, Teachers and Programme Managers from the FET sector have noted a range of examples of inclusion in our partner and host organisations. What follows is a whistle stop tour of observations from 2014-2017 projects.

Jyvaskyla Education Consortium - Finland

In the Career Start and JOPO programmes, young people aged 16 and over, are given to opportunity to make up lost ground, sometimes caused through illness, family issues or poor decision making. These programme provide young people with a space to support their transition from mainstream comprehensive education back into mainstream vocational or academic Upper Secondary school programmes. The principles underpinning the Finnish education system are that everybody has capacity, and a strengths-based approach based on seeking the best solution for the learner is favoured.

In Jyvaskyla, we saw two sign language interpreters working in a music class for a group of social care students, signing the songs that were being learned, supporting two learners and giving visibility to the skills as being normal in the community.

Arendal Voksopplaering - Norway

In Arendal, the Adult Learning Centre, run by the local Commune, 80% of the learners are immigrants, newly arrived to Norway. Learners are provided with courses based on individual learner assessment, over 3-4 years, in order to achieve the required learning to avail of Norwegian citizenship. The range of activities in the centre celebrated and supported the cultures of the learners, also supported by the council, which hosts welcome events, such as food markets, social, and cultural events, which give the new arrivals in the community visibility and allow Norwegians to learn about the other cultures. The local library café is particularly impressive, providing work placement for learners from the Adult Learning Centre who have not yet achieved the level of Norwegian required to interact with the public in a more commercial setting. Learners gain experience of workplaces so that they can practice Norwegian in realistic environments. The learners worked on food preparation, bringing food to the tables, and clearing tables in a beautiful, light-filled public library.

How participation in Erasmus+ activities gives us an insight into inclusion in other European States