Designing and Developing New VET Curricula to Address Skills Gaps in the Aeronautics Industry

Aeronautic industry is one of the enablers of the economic development and social insertion at European level, and it is one of the drivers of expansion of remote regions as far as it allows habitants, workers, and companies at these regions to expand their activities and areas of influence. The European aeronautics industry, including the commercial air transport, generates more than 220 billion of Euros and more than 4.5 million of jobs. These figures are expected to be double by 2030. Future developments in the sector, together with greater intra-European mobility of workers and population aging, bring 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 labor market. This work discusses the outcomes of the AIRVET project, an European partnership whose principal objective is the development and promotion of "curricula and VET courses" in the Maintenance and Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) domains, required for a highly skilled aeronautical workforce.