Abstract
Aeronautic Industry has a critical responsibility in facilitating European economic growth and social inclusion providing revenues to otherwise isolated regions and allowing people to enlarge their horizons. According to the EU, currently aeronautics and air transport are key drivers of European cohesion and competitiveness, representing 220 billions of Euros and providing 4,5 million of jobs in Europe, a figure that should double by 2020. Future developments in the sector, together with greater intra-European mobility of workers and population aging brings a greater need for new skills in the work force together with an urgency for a larger number of professionals. Therefore, to achieve the desirable sustained growth the EU needs to invest in high quality VET (Vocational Education and Training) in order to be able to supply the AI (Aeronautic Industry) with qualified workers. VET stands for education and training which aims to equip people with knowledge, know-how, skills and/or competences required in particular occupations or more broadly on the labour market. This paper presents the initial results of an "initiative" supported by the European Commission called AIRVET. Its main objective is to design, develop, evaluate and disseminate adapted/new AI curricula and VET courses in the specific fields of Maintenance and Information and Communications Technologies (ICT). The methodology followed included an analysis of a desk study, questionnaires completed by over five hundred people, focus group meetings held in four countries and individual interviews performed in the six partner countries. The project triangulates the results to establish clear areas that would benefit from the development of vocational training. Three subject areas were identified to be explored in terms of developing/adapting training curricula and developing multimedia training materials: maintenance, ground operations and human factors.
Highlights
As was recently discussed at a UK Education and Skills meeting organised by the Royal Aeronautical Society (RAeS) the financial importance of the aerospace industry to the European economy is significant [1]
The work carried out to investigate these issues, named "Territorial Analysis", was split into three components, as illustrated on Figure 2: A desk study to identify and analyse the current VET programmes offered in the airline industry in Europe, and determine the principal EU regulations that structured the training in the aviation industry and identify skill gaps; A questionnaires study to sought views directly from practitioners to obtain information on their views of skills needs and skills gaps, current training available and methods of training delivery; A focus groups on skills needs study to foster face-face discussion among agents in the aviation industry using the preliminary results obtained from the desk research and questionnaire analysis
This paper illustrates the attempt made by ARIVET project to identify skill gaps and training needs in the aerospace industry focusing mainly on 6 EU countries: France, Italy, Poland, Portugal, Spain and the UK
Summary
As was recently discussed at a UK Education and Skills meeting organised by the Royal Aeronautical Society (RAeS) the financial importance of the aerospace industry to the European economy is significant [1]. The industry is constantly developing technology to improve aircraft performance and the efficiency of the operation of airports and aircrafts. This need for a growing number of trained personal can be further seen in statements made by most of the large aviation companies, such as Airbus that: “... 2. Designing and Developing New VET Curricula to Address Skills Gaps in the Aeronautical Industry. EU needs to invest in high quality VET (Vocational Education Training) in order to be able to supply the AI (Aeronautic Industry) with qualified workers [8, 9]. Delivering the Curricula by Developing Pilot Runs, practical learning sessions in which the dynamic solutions will be tested in order to collect opinions from both the trainers and the participants on the educational programmes and innovative learning approaches
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