Solaris

This project is aimed primarily at the organisational level in the education sector; it is intended to be a practical tool to assist those with responsibility for employment, such as school managers, policy makers and social partners, as well as teachers and trainers, (continuous professional development, or CPD, trainers in particular) to ensure that the school workforce ageing is managed successfully and that age does not become a barrier to employment.

From the point of view of educators, age management presents sets of actions for the needs of people of different ages (not just for the older employees) with the aim to prepare the educators for the moment when the school will have to employ a significantly larger rate of employees aged over 50 than it does today.
This project will address the school staff, VET teachers and trainers in particular. The CPD program designed in this project will target professional teaching staff and will reflect the current needs in the ageing school environment.

Project Objectives

The main objective of the project is to develop a set of practical tools for educators of all levels (especially VET providers) that relate to age management in the education sector. The set of tools will consist of collections of best practice examples on solutions to age-related issues in schools, comparative analysis of the case studies and recommendations for the educators on the effective choice of age management measures. In addition, a curriculum for training of selected school staff in age related topics will be developed as well as a model introductory training program. The program outputs will be made available digitally to the public upon their completion.

Project Outputs

Case study on age management in the education sector

This output will be the result of a survey investigating the best practices in educational age management. The partners intend to amalgamate 24 examples of schools which have implemented successful age management practices in their institution. Based on the collected data, a set of recommendations for schools and education centres will be created which will contain detailed instruction and step-by-step guidance on how exactly the situation described in the good practice example can or should be solved, which decisions to make and what circumstances to consider.

Training Curriculum

The training curriculum output will comprise of 4 separate packages, each with a different target group: school teachers/trainers, school managers/directors, counsellors and educational consultants and CPD trainers. The curriculum will contain all the required information necessary to design and/or provide training for the selected target group on the topic of age management.

Introductory Training Program for School Staff

As the trainers’ needs develop, the knowledge and skills they require will also evolve. This is where CPD will come to the teachers’ rescue and help them steer their career in the right direction.This training program will be built upon the results of the thorough analysis of the teaching staff needs related to the age management in schools. It will provide the introductory lessons to the age-related issues occurring in the education sector and outline the directions in which these issues can and should be solved.

Read the project newsletter here!

Project outputs will be available to the public as open source in December 2023.

Age Management Masterclass

Age management is a new competence for managers and supervisors in all companies and work organizations affected by the demographic change. Also in private and public sector organizations are forced to adjust their functions for all generations. The most urgent need of age management is in companies where heavy physical and/or mental load is present.

The partnership of this project came together with the aim to help tackle this issue and help employers and educators understand the processes of age management. During the last 28 months we have been working on two outputs that should improve accessability to examples of a good practice in age management and share them among the networks of stakeholders: the online tool for sharing the best practice and recommendation for the employers and policymakers.

The creation of the outputs has been completmented by three study visits: to Finland, Italy and Austria. Our teams of professionals have visited the places where age management works and we have talked to those who managed to make it happen.

Project Objectives

The main objective of the project is to help the process of adaptation to the rising requirements of the labor market by providing the quality guidance tool for companies (age management advisors or in-company trainers) and VET providers (teachers and trainers).

The main project objective has been fulfilled by the following partial objectives:

to create a professional network in the problem area and contribute to it
to create and provide a high quality age management guidance tool in the two distinct intellectual outputs sections
to involve age management trainers (teachers/trainers from VET providers) into the training activities
to spread the results of the project within the professional networks of the partners (read more in our Newsletter 5 about the final project results and disseminational conferences)

Short-term staff training

The main objective of the training was to provide a synergistic environment for learning by doing. The participants took part in two different kinds of activities that complemented each other, providing an optimal conditions for learning the particular methodological approach: visits to the companies, and thematic workshops.

The aims of the visits were:

to see the functioning age management system in real life
to have opportunity to consult the particular age management features with the professional on site
to learn about the conditions that are being considered in the particular case study
to collect the information relevant for the process of creation of the intellectual outputs of the project

The aims of the workshops were :

to train the selected skills and competencies related to the particular case study
to elaborate the methodology that could be used to solve the problem under the simulated conditions
to learn by doing
to find out all the questions an age management advisor might stumble upon during their work
to provide the recommendations usable by the guidelines users

Newsletters from our three training activities:

Project Outputs

We have designed and created two distinct intellectual outputs in this project:

Collection of Good Practice Examples

The examples come from the companies in all partner countries where the age management has been implemented and where it is functioning with the visible benefits for the company and community. We have collected 28 examples that are divided according to their origin, area of impact, target age considered etc. Each example is described according to the scheme (unified for all examples) with focus on reflecting those problem areas that are required by the end users.

Recommendation on Age Implementation

As each success story of good practice brings a genuine set of conditions under which the company had to take decisions, the example itself represent a unique learning material for the potential end users, which can be either the age management advisors right in the company management system or trainers (in-company trainers working with the employees, or the VET teachers/trainers working with the students and learners in the educational courses). The recommendation provides the insight into the decision making and problem solving processes of the real companies.

We have subjected the information from all the examples to a thorough analysis and summarized the conclusions into a set of recommendations that you can use to inspire and guide your work as an age management manager or a lecturer.

Age Management Implementation: Case Study Analysis and Methodology Recommendation