Laboratory for Policies and Practices of Social Development in Higher Education (ACCES4ALL)

European countries have been registering high university drop-out rates on the one hand and serious skills shortages on the other hand. In order to make all educational potential available and to foster the permeability among educational sectors, initiatives have been started to counsel drop-outs into vocational education and training. These initiatives, so it is the basic idea of this project, need to be based on networks connecting stakeholders from the academic, economic and VET sector. The reason is that only inter-sectoral cooperation can offer a holistic counseling including the recognition of informally gained learning outcomes. Considering the idea of a European Area of Transparent Skills and Competences, these networks need to be localized not only at regional and national, but also at international level. The ProNet project aims at supporting the development of these inter-sectoral networks at European level. Partners from Germany, France, Spain, Poland and the Czech Republic, who represent an inter-sectoral composition themselves, provide the networks with two new tools. First, guidelines are developed which allow university drop-outs to identify and document their previous learning outcomes and to match them with learning contents of vocational trainings. Focusing the areas of engineering and business studies, the contents of university module guides and lecture programs are linked to vocational training regulations and further professional descriptions. By following the guidelines, drop-outs find out, which vocational education matches their previous learning outcomes. Second, relevant stakeholders (job centers, student advisory services, career centers, chambers of commerce and industry, among others) in all partner countries are involved as multipliers and provided with a networking space in the form of an online platform. Here, they can connect, exchange ideas and use the guidelines with a sustainable dimension.