Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Created: 04.03.2015
Updated: 04.03.2015
Simulimpresa Programme was born in 1994 within Istituto Don Calabria Ferrara and it promotes
the training through the experience acquired in a real environment (working hours, discipline, real
working situations, tasks development). Each practice firm focuses on a real office or an enterprise
framework in a certain area.
The participants work in a real productive atmosphere and learn and realize the requested tasks. At
the end of the course the participant has a global concept about office work, with working
experience and with adaptation skills for a job as e.g. flexibility and enterprise culture.
The institutions and organizations currently involved Simulimpresa are coordinated by the National
Central Office - which is one of the EUROPEN - PEN INTERNATIONAL founders, an international
non-profit association, duly registered at the Court of Essen which gathers 48 member countries,
bringing together over 7,500 practice firms
In setting up new practice firms and co-ordinating existing practice firms , the Central Office offers
the following services:
Moreover, the Central Office offers the Italian practice firms the following services:
Banks: 2 banks - which have as tasks:
- current account: national payments and drawings
- cheque payments and drawings, banking transfers, receipts
- international payments: transfers, cheques
Clients and Suppliers for administration and industrial areas
Tourism suppliers:
- Tour Operators and Foreign Correspondents.
Official Boards:
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This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This publication reflects the views only of the author, and the
Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.
- National Institute for Social Security, National Institute for Working Accidents, Court Chancellery,
Chamber of Industry and Commerce, VAT Office, INTRASTAT Office, Register Office.
Services:
- water and gas usage, superhighway, vigilance, publicity, motorway restaurant, maintenance,
national and international transports, notary, assurance, cleanness, leasing,.
Tourism services:
- hotels in Italy and abroad, restaurants in Italy and abroad, catering, photograph, tourist guides,
translators, hostesses, chairmen, unit ticket centres.
The participants in practice firms are unemployed, graduates from high schools or universities and
young people with a low school attendance level, students of Technical Commercial and Vocational
Institutes, workers integrated within business innovator processes who must up-date their own
vocational skills
METHODOLOGICAL ASPECTS
One of the main points of this methodology is the users autonomy.
The declared objective is to allow the participants in practice firms the acquirement of transversal
skills, respecting their individual peculiarity.
Particularly there are some important elements as:
Let them doing alone.
The user, when acquired already the minimum skills to develop his activity, he must do the tasks
trying to understand and to solve the problem for reaching the expected results without the help
of the trainer.
The verifying moment and the corrections will be made after, even if it doesnt mean avoiding the
explanations of contents.
Sense of responsibility.
This sense is realized in the documents and in the operations made within each office of the
practice firm.
Therefore is necessary that each participant must understand the own tasks and be responsible for
fulfilling them.
The rotation system of the participants is another instrument for increasing the sense of
responsibility.
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This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This publication reflects the views only of the author, and the
Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.
Co-operation.
During the work in the practice firm the users must help each other but they must transfer their
competencies to the next who will take their place.
Team working.
Often for the office work is necessary to do some activities together with other colleagues. Its very
important to form a group that is working with maximum efficiency and respecting the enterprise
decisions. They have to reach a good result for the enterprise.
Proposal capability.
Each participant must have the opportunity to express the own opinion regarding the practice firm
functioning and to propose improvements. These proposals will be discussed with the other
colleagues and after they will make decisions. Its important taking into account the motivation
during these discussions and if necessary, help them to find the solution.
Self-learning.
In the practice firm its necessary to have materials (on paper, multimedia, videotapes) for
consulting different subjects when the users need. The use of these materials must be stimulated,
but also the trainers must control it.
PRACTICE ENTERPRISE AS AN ANSWER TO THE CURRENT SITUATION
The practice enterprise is born after a careful analysis to the impact of the training and education
offer on the job world.
Such analysis has brought results that have put in evidence the inadequacy of the qualifications
towards the demands of the firms owed to the lack of practical ability, to the insufficient
knowledge of the business environment, to difficulty to work in team, to the scarce application of
organizational behaviours, needing a long period of working insertion accordingly with increase of
the costs to load of the enterprise.
The classical model of training foresees a theoretical-practical period within the training structure
to which does succession an apprenticeship period in a real enterprise.
As an answer to the gap found in phase of analysis it was undertaken the practice firm
methodology, the reproduction of real situations of job, and particularly discipline: schedule,
relationships, situations of job, development of the offices, team work.
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This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This publication reflects the views only of the author, and the
Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.
Practice firms, already operating in most other European countries, were evaluated and found to be
the teaching method which best responded to the targets to be achieved.
The different networks of Practice Firms can provide learning environments through which the
students will be able to acquire key qualifications like interpersonal skills as well as practising for a
working life all over the world and thus acquiring intercultural skills while also acquiring vocational
skills.
Practice Firms reproduce the structure and workings of a "real" firm in every way, in terms of work
times, surroundings, documentation, interpersonal relationships, and surroundings.
The duties of individual students are not rigid, but subject to rotation: for each position in each
department there is not a pre-set time to reach the objectives. Rotations can vary in relation to the
learning time of each student.
Todays trend:
PE Typology
PEs N
Trainees N/Year
For adults
75
5000
In private companies
200
80
150
98
4500
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This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This publication reflects the views only of the author, and the
Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.
23
600
in Universities
200
450
224
11180
Second phase:
training in Practice Enterprise
min 40% of the total amount of hours
First phase:
Preparatory training
max. 15% of the total amount
of hours
Third phase:
complementary training
In every practice firm there are usually three departments, indispensable to the running of the
company. For companies in the Administration and Finance area, for example, the following may be
defined:
Administration department: looks after all documentation relative to administration and
accounting, the financial progress of the firm, the preparation of a budget.
Commercial department: looks after sales and purchase dealings with other foreign and home
practice firms.
Personnel department: looks after all the administration concerning the management of staff in the
firm: work contracts, pay, and dealings with Official Boards.
Leaving aside the firms particular sector, all practice firms run on an organised network, marketing
their goods or services amongst themselves.
Rotation is an important strategy and it must be flexible, depending on learning time of each
participant.
A Practice Firm Is a Total Learning Environment
Teachers/trainers and students/trainees are actively involved in the learning process
Learning is experienced as a natural process, primarily through interaction
All the key skills, qualities and abilities can be experienced and practiced
An ability to work in teams, which will be seen by employers as increasingly important, is the
cornerstone of the learning strategy of the Practice Firm.
Industrial production
in which are involved the following typologies of participants:
Commercial
Personnel
ADMINISTRATION DEPARTMENT:
manages documents relative to accounts and administration of the Firm so as to have a budget
and control the cash flow.
In particular, the following are kept:
VAT registers;
VAT payments;
accountancy registers
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This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This publication reflects the views only of the author, and the
Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.
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This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This publication reflects the views only of the author, and the
Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.
Reception
office
Accounting
Production
Commercial
Tickets office
Planning
Desk
Incoming
Department Administration:
tied up administrative procedures to the type of society
performs of reception office
accounting VAT
general accounting
accounting of the sales of services
accounting of services acquirements
relationships with the banks
collections and payments
budgets
editing administrative documents launches
bookkeeping books
Production department:
booking and issue of the tickets (airplanes, railway and maritime)
accountingbook
dealing with customers
consultation of the catalogues, of the confidential ones
preparation of the contracts with the customer
planning of the trips on measure from catalogue
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This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This publication reflects the views only of the author, and the
Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.
Commercial department:
dealing with the customer
management of sale interview
management of information
signatures of the contracts with the customer
activation of the assistance to the customer
insurances
market research
collections of the advances and release of the relative receipts
management of the bookings
delivery of the trip documents (voucher, tickets)
EXAMPLE OF HOTEL:
BACK OFFICE
FRONT OFFICE
Treasure
Administration
Commercial
FRONT OFFICE
sale telephone service
with the individual customer
reception
recording, planning, relationships with the tourist agencies
daily relationships with the customer
BACK OFFICE
accounting
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This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This publication reflects the views only of the author, and the
Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.
registers of law
first note and vouchers
external relationships with the agencies, the office of the tourism and the police, with the banks
external relationships with the suppliers for the customers (newspaper etc.)
external relationships with events organizations or other hotels (overbooking)
Treasureship
acquisitions
assistance
store management
inside relationships with the administration (invoices)
external relationships with the suppliers
Administration
payment suppliers
telephone, electricity, water
credits collection
inside relationships with the Treasurership, the Direction and the Commercial one
external relationships with the banks and the simulated enterprises
Commercial
internal relationships with the Direction and the administration
external relationships with the events operators, with the Italian and foreign practice enterprises
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This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This publication reflects the views only of the author, and the
Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.
Production
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This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This publication reflects the views only of the author, and the
Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.
2) the school, which is located, especially today, to receive discomfort, and not being able to solve
it.
To have a positive impact in this area, the school should be aware of its fundamental role in
education. The school is the first privileged place of encounter between companies and fewer lives
directly the experience of the great cultural changes that are reflected on youth behavior
The real innovation must start by the teachers, who must recover their motivation.
3) the society: we have already seen the effects of the profound cultural changes related to
mass media but there are also the dominant value orientations (success, money,
hedonism etc.) that affect the goals that boys are given. It 'a duty of society as a whole to teach
young people that education and training are fundamental values
for their future
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This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This publication reflects the views only of the author, and the
Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.
Despite the fact that early school leaving is decreasing: passing from 28.7% to 21.5% and is
increasing the rate of secondary school attendance rising from 67.4% to 74.6%, Italy still lags
behind the abandonment.
Enhancing in the right way the apprenticeships through enhancing school-work experiences could
be the answer to part of the leakage problem.
Open school: remedial afternoon courses could prevent the risk of rejection.
Trainers training: teacher training should be one of the keys to fight dispersion by increasing the
quality of teaching What is needed at the school would be a school staff consisting of dedicated
teachers, remotivated professionally.
Not Italian citizen students: foreign students represent a very wide band of dispersion risk
New learning environments: to combat early school leavers and reconnect young people to the
school there is also need to re-design the spaces where learning takes place, redesigning school
construction, the distribution of space and furniture ..
Reorder cycles and cutting a year: reorder School levels could be a tool in the fight against school
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This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This publication reflects the views only of the author, and the
Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.
dropouts. The variant of four years instead of 5 may be a way to shorten the course of high school,
then creating a year-bridge between secondary education and post-secondary education while
reducing the exams just to two or three discipline
Conclusions:
The responsibility is no longer the culprit search for but it's a get involved to find a possible
solution by reviewing the behaviors and skills, through:
1) prevention, which must be in the first place prevention of the selection;
2) the network: the school cannot face alone the inevitably mass of problems, but cannot even
think of giving up it's central function. The network must be born around specific shared objectives;
3) the leadership and empowerment of young people: recover the leadership of the
young people, make them feel responsible for their growth is probably the first step to a school
that promotes educational success and not only against the trench discomfort. In this sense are
also crucial the guidance activities.
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This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This publication reflects the views only of the author, and the
Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.
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This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This publication reflects the views only of the author, and the
Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.
On the methodological side, CEFAL has always tried to bring the activity of the classroom close to
workplace in its concreteness. Also in the field of tourism, collaborating with Europen network, it
realized the Simulated Enterprise in the training of travel agents.
In 1998 started an integrated system of services for the transition to job, which provided a onestep shop with counseling activities and training packages customized, adult-oriented (in the
province of Bologna) and disabled people oriented (in the province of Ravenna)
In 1999 Cefal startupped a social cooperative (IT2) that still operates hosting internally transition to
employment ways for people in social or psichical deseas, in which the new workers coming out
from the courses, but not yet ready for the labor market "profit" are hired for a period in which
they can strengthen their competence and can prepare themselves, within a maximum of two
years, to insert them
From the social enterprise IT2 to the training enterprise Le Torri Restaurant: this is the last step
in order of time: if the social enterprise ranks transition between the end of the training course and
the entry in the labor market, the training enterprise is directly connetted with the training course
program and realizes a part of it. This enterprise, again, reproduces the same dynamics of the
simulated one, where the group class realizes a true labor process, but in a simulated market. But
the difference is that all customers, job, production and the economic balance is real: all the
practical part of the training takes place from 12 oclock, when the restaurant opens, at 15 oclock
when, after the closure, students analyze the result obtained in the day and wrong or good
behavior.
School and dispersion in Bologna
The latest statistics available at the Provincial level of the school system and training says that 6.5%
of young people between 15 and 19 years is not haunting nobody path.
About the 80% of scolastic-age population choose an high or technical school, meanwhile the
system of education and vocational training, comparable to the three-year qualification, becomes
an interesting solution for about 4700 people
In Bologna, we can define a starting point in 2008, when the Provincial Conference of School and
Professional Training Center was setted up and started to work. During the first months of work, it
were shared and defined following priorities:
To build a common vision of the system on the problem in the areas of common interest;
to draw a masterplan that encourages network actions according to this vision and in the same
time enhance the efforts made by the different institutions and different program agreements
(social plans of the area, Agreements Law 104 school projects funded by the Region) to define the
criteria to identify the most effective and useful practices in the areas of common interest to build
project ideas
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This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This publication reflects the views only of the author, and the
Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.
The Provincial Conference produced various analysis report of the causes and remedies about the
scolastic drop out and created a governance level, that constantly checks the phenomenon
through a continuous and permanent relationship between the basic school system, high and
technical school and vocational and education training and social services of the local
municipalities.
This system has reduced school drop out that in the province of Bologna, the last school
year, fell below a quarter of the regional average (2,8%), thanks to a strong integrated
network: the number of those leaving the different channels before carrying the right-duty school
and training.
For example, the 14-17 years old young people who have dropped out of school between July
2012 and September 2012 (middle and high school) are about 1,170; among these 340 have been
identified and in October 2012 involved in a VET course and the employment through an
apprenticeship training involves every year approximately 80 children.
But there are about 750 young people who have dropped out of school and have not entered into
a course of vocational training or apprenticeship and are therefore in a position of risk of nonfulfillment of the right and duty to education and training.
It is supposed, therefore, that there are roughly 750 young people who have dropped out of school
and have not entered into a course of vocational training or apprenticeship and are therefore in a
position of risk of school failure.
Orientation and support tools in CEFAL
Key figure is the tutor, who is not a teacher, but keep on a relationship with each student, , to
facilitate the learning process of young and monitoring all risk situations in a network link with
teachers, families, enterprises and local public services. Tutor is the link between the teachers care
and relational aspects, behavioral and "educational climate", both inside the classroom that, while
entering the farm, between the student and the work context. In particular
The training courses provided by the system of IeFP, are complemented by activities set up
to support young people to attend the courses successfully: in some cases are promoted
by the Regional and Provincial education authority, in other cases they represent a choice
and an investment of CEFAL
Mobility 2020
It is a regional project that gives students the opportunity of a stage in another European
country for a minimum period of 15 days. CEFAL every year manages to form a group of
15-20 students who go abroad, usually in Spain, to be inserted in local enterprises .
Regional action against drop out
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This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This publication reflects the views only of the author, and the
Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.
Each Education and Vocational Training School or Center can invest regional funds in order
to set up specific individual and / or little-group projects to be activated in a flexible way in
addition to the normal training activities. These projects can be very different from each other
and are calibrated on individual class or student skills analysis, and customized to it, developing
basic skills using specific and not traditional tools (art, music, sport - for example sailing)
But it is also a limit because the analysis of the matter in the training enterprise during a
day o a month are important steps for growth of professional skills of the students is
compressed by the priority to be given to the "customer". So you have a paradox: if the
business goes bad (few customers) there is a lot of time available for reflections and
analysis of the "wrong" or "good" behaviors. If the business goes well (many customers)
the time dedicated to the business expands and gets close to the end of the "lesson time"
and its more difficult to implement the wrong and good analysis
The strategic keys for success are typically
a) to anticipate in the classroom the relation of responsibility with colleagues
b) leverage on mutual accountability for increasing motivation
c) ability to transform these motivations in acquiring the skills needed to achieve the final
degree
Teachers have also adapted their way of teaching, going from the theoretical-practical
lessons to a kind of learning in team, in which the contents are transmitted primarily
through the job experience. In the real restaurant, this happens naturally and almost
automatic for teachers of specific vocational issues, while it is more difficult to achieve this
by the teachers of the cultural, anthropological and scientific didactical areas. Therefore we
intend to engage in training especially these teachers, because much more then the others they
need to build support tools.
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This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This publication reflects the views only of the author, and the
Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.
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This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This publication reflects the views only of the author, and the
Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.