School-company collaboration

As students and teachers continue to navigate the challenges presented by COVID 19, the collaborative platform Together 4 STEM, coordinated by CSR Europe, has launched STEM@Home: a digital learning platform with a rich collection of free, multi-lingual courses on STEM. The platform’s partners Amgen, IBM, and Johnson & Johnson, currently offer resources in English, French, Italian and Spanish, and cover age groups from 6 to early 20s.

The materials will support students and teachers with easily accessible world-class resources.  From “Elephant Toothpaste”, a course that helps explain chemical reactions to kids between the ages of 11 and 14 all the way through to  “Gene editing with CRISPR-Cas9”, or  “Cybersecurity Fundamentals”, teachers and students are one click away from building, developing and sharpening their STEM skills (see programme website for more information about the activities mentioned).

STEM@Home will continue to add new resources and expand beyond the pandemic to become a long-term reference point for digital education and effective remote learning.

On 13 May 2013, over 60 parties signed the National Technology Pact 2020 in an effort to structurally improve alignment between education and the technology job market and reduce the shortage of technically trained staff. Since the official signing of the Technology Pact, all the involved partners have made concerted and dedicated efforts to implement the necessary measures on the basis of an integrated approach entitled ‘Choosing, learning and working in technology’. The Technology Pact is characterised by a regional approach with a national support infrastructure. 

As the results clearly show, the approach has proven effective and is now being emulated at international level: in the wake of Estonia and Flanders, Denmark is also set to introduce its own Technology Pact later this year.

The Technology Pact was updated three years after its original signing in order to evolve in pace with the inevitable social changes as a result of ongoing technological developments. A new structure has been defined on the basis of twelve objectives, offering room to continue ongoing measures from the original Technology Pact and formulate relevant new goals. The overarching ambitions for the Technology Pact 2016–2020 will remain unchanged: developing a structural approach to ensure a well-trained workforce with enough smart and capable technicians for the jobs of today and tomorrow.

An English version of the document can be downloaded here.

To meet changing job requirements, government and private sector in the Netherlands have joined forces to accelerate change and invest in conversion of the workforce through the Centres of Expertise (higher education) and Centres of Innovative Craftsmanship (vocational education). The Centres are powerful action-oriented partnerships between educational institutions, companies, goverments and other public organisations. The network of Centres started in 2011 with a few pilots, and has expanded to over 150 fully operational public-private partnerships (Centres) in 2016. The main objectives of the Centres are:

• Creating an excellent link between edcation and the labour market
• Educating innovative and skilled professionals, craftsman or craftswoman
• Promoting 'life-long learning and timely retraining
• Accelerating and enhancing the innovation capacity of companies

Each Centre focuses on a specific sector (High Tech Systems & Materials, Horticulture, Life Sciences & Health, Agri & Food, Water, Energy, Chemicals, Logistics, Creative industry, ICT, Construction or Culture, Living & Welfare). On average, each centre involves 35 companies from the sector that take part in research and development projects, providing imput in the curriculum, join innovation teams and provide guest lectures. More information about the centres and methodology can be found in the English brochure.  

StarT is the flagship programme of the LUMA Centre Finland (Finnish STEM platform). Launched in 2016, the programme's main objective is to bring science, mathematics and technology closer to children and youngsters through interdisciplinary, project-based collaborative learning. The programme is implemented by LUMA Centre Finland (network between 13 regional STEM education centre within Finnish universities) through 'learning communities', supported by collaboration partners including the Finnish National Agency for Education and companies in the field of science and technology like IBM.

The StarT programme is implemented on three levels:|
 

1. Local level: kindergartens, primary schools, high schools, and extracurricular activity groups participating in StarT
    
2. Regional level: StarT festivals organized all around Finland by the LUMA centers together with local partners (does not apply to non-Finnish participants)
    
3. National / International level: the LUMA Centre Finland organizes the StarT Gala, where teams chosen by the StarT jury – also non-Finnish teams – are awarded
    

In these levels, the StarT programme supports project-based learning in the local learning communities, StarT festivals and a national/international StarT gala.

STEM Teacher Academy is a programme of the Dutch national STEM platform aimed at improving the content of STEM courses (and the way it is taught) in secondary education through cooperation with industry. The programme was launched in 2014 for a three year period and contributes to objectives set in the Dutch national Technology Pact and several government programmes aimed at reducing teacher shortages. 

The programme's main ambition is to provide the most up-to-date teaching tools to STEM teachers in secondary education, now and in the future. This ambition is implemented through various activities, including guest-lectures by industry professionals and short-term 'internships' for teachers in technology companies. The programme is structured to build lasting links between technology companies and classroom and builds on existing regionalised networks and programmes, including the VO-HO netwerken (pre-university secondary education) and Toptechniek in Bedrijf (VET).  

The VO-HO Netwerken (Secondary-Higher Education Networks) were set up in 2004 as part of the Deltaplan Bèta Techniek (Dutch national STEM strategy). The main goals of the networks are the professional development of secondary education teachers and principals, the continual innovation of courses and curricula and the improvement of the connection between secondary education (VO) and higher education (HO). The networks offer a wide pallet of activities for students, teachers, technical teacher assistants and heads of schools with a focus on STEM education. Currently there are are ten regional networks that consist of universities,  higher education institutions, (pre-univeristy) secondary schools and business and societal institutions. The specific objectives are set by each regional network independently, in alignment with the regional context and objectives. 

Jet-Net & TechNet (JNTN), or "Youth Technology Network Netherlands" is a flagship programme of the Dutch National STEM platform (PTvT). It's main objective is to increase STEM uptake in secondary education by providing context to the curriculum. This is achieved through one-on-one partnerships between leading tech companies and secondary schools. 

The programme was founded by five Dutch technology companies (Shell, Philips, DSM, AkzoNobel and Unilever) in 2002 and currently involves more than 90 technology companies and 180 pre-university secondary schools (aprox. 40% of total). In close collaboration with secondary schools, 'Jet-Net companies' develop an educational environment with practical content for the science curriculum and provide students with experiences that show that technology is challenging, meaningful and socially relevant.

Each of the school-company partnerships is supported by the national bureau and its regional coordinators in the development of an activity programme. These activities are supplemented by larger-scale regional and national events (e.g. Innovation Challenges, Career Days, debating competitions, etc.) as well as activities focused on specific target groups (e.g. female role models, activities focused on parents, etc.). An overview of the most commonly used JNTN activities can be found in the 'background documents' tab at the top of this page. 

JNTN activities are based on the 'BètaTechMentality-model' (see 'publications' section for English-language version) which provides a comprehensive framework for targeting students based on their intrinsic motivation ('drijfveren') to study STEM subjects. More information about the BètaTechMentality-model (including English version) and underlying research can be found on the publication page (accessible via the 'publications' tab above). 

In 2012 a version of the Jet-Net programme was launched in Denmark by the Danish House of Natural Sciences (Naturvidenskabernes Hus) under the label 'Jet-Net.dk' (rebranded in 2018 as the 'TekTanken'-programme). In 2020 the Basque Innovation Agency (InnoBasque) in Spain launched a pilot Jet-Net programme inspired by the Dutch Jet-Net model for school-company collaboration. More information about this initiative can be found in the taskforce dossier.