Handbook 'Working Together Works: How ICT Companies and Schools Can Collaborate in Three Concrete Steps''

This handbook was created and translated by the Katapult network, one of the flagship initiatives of the Dutch national STEM platform focused on public-private partnerships in Vocational Education and Training. The network currently supports over 200 public-private partnerships involving over 10.000 companies.

In this era of digitalization, it is not surprising that we need more students and skilled workers in ICT. Collaboration between companies and schools is an important instrument to address those shortages, because we cannot solve this issue by ourselves. The big question is: how do you organise this? Some companies do not have much time or resources to spare, while others are looking for long term relations with the schools in their region. Luckily, there are many inspiring examples of collaboration between schools and ICT companies, ranging from internships and guest lectures, to retraining staff or contributions from compagnies to innovate the curriculum together with the schools.

NL Digital, the Dutch ICT branche organisation, Human Capital Agenda ICT (Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate) and Katapult collected these examples in a practical handbook for companies. With a handy decision tree you can determine in three steps how much time and resources you would like to commit, which issues you want to address and which concrete actions you can undertake. Based on the outcome of the decision tree, you get an overview of tips on how to collaborate with schools and inspiring examples of how other ICT companies and schools are already succesfully working together.