"School and teachers move with practice mobile equipment"

"School and teachers move with practice mobile equipment"

Thanks to the establishment of a sector advisory board, Yuverta offers engaging, hands-on education

Aligning teaching materials as closely as possible with real-world practice—that’s what all schools want. To produce mobile machinery technicians who z…roll into the workshop and start tinkering right away. At Yuverta in Boxtel, they’ve systematically addressed that need through a sector advisory board that includes regional companies, industry organizations such as Fedecom, teachers, and the SBB. They meet several times a year to discuss education. The goal? To align education with the needs of the business community and to make the course material as practical as possible. Ton Helsper, training manager at Yuverta, explains how this works.

Thanks to discussions within the advisory board, Yuverta is able to systematically update its curriculum. “As a school and as teachers, we need to keep pace with industry practices. Feedback from the companies we work with is very important to us. It gives us insight into how things can be done differently. Developments in the sector are moving so quickly—we need to respond to that. For example, electrification is an important topic. But so is the fact that many engine parts are no longer repaired these days but are simply replaced entirely. In that case, it’s not necessary for a student to learn every detail of such a part inside and out,” Ton explains.

A more inquisitive attitude among students
This is in line with what companies often say themselves: students don’t need to learn everything, as long as they understand it. The adjustments to the curriculum are therefore not just about technical revisions. Ton: “We need to keep adapting our education. This involves teaching methods, the content of the curriculum, and the content of our internship assignments. As for teaching methods, we’d like to move toward an approach that offers more hands-on experience. It encourages a more inquisitive attitude on the part of the student. It gives the instructor more time and space to provide personalized attention. The instructor takes on more of a coaching and mentoring role. More hands-on experience and more opportunities to do things themselves motivate students, and that makes the program more appealing.”

Reducing Dropout Rates
This allows schools to provide companies with a degree of customization. Theory is increasingly being translated into practice, a development that equips students with skills they can put to use immediately. Ton: “One of the reasons we launched this sector advisory board four years ago was to work together with the professional field to critically assess the content and level of our curriculum. Students were dropping out, perhaps because the mobile equipment mechanic program was too theoretical. Now that we’re giving the practical side more emphasis, we see that students are much more motivated. And that motivation is essential for completing the program. The curriculum must be educational but, above all, varied. We’ve only been using this revised teaching method for one school year, so it’s still a bit early to measure results. We’ve noticed that dropout rates haven’t gotten any worse—on the contrary, I even suspect we’re doing an even better job of retaining our students!”

Practical Education: A Continuous Improvement Process
The initiative may not be unique in the world of education. But Yuverta can serve as an inspiring example for other schools to improve their teaching materials and upgrade their teaching methods. Alignment with the business community is a core value of the Tim educational platform. Only in this way can teaching materials be developed that seamlessly align with daily practice in the workplace.

Yuverta is part of Tim. If updating the curriculum proves effective at this vocational school, similar initiatives at the platform’s other twelve schools could also yield improvements. Yuverta teachers share their insights with the national curriculum development working group. All other schools can benefit from these modifications. Perhaps it will even lead to a nationwide reduction in student dropout rates!

Increasing the influx of skilled professionals
Continuously improving, keeping a close eye on innovations, maintaining ties with the field, and training students so they’ll be fully prepared for the day-to-day work. This requires a constant process of improvement, one that companies, teachers, Tim, and Fedecom must work on together. The result? A greater influx of skilled professionals for the future!