With a legacy dated 150 years back, “Mihai Viteazul” National College (abbreviated CNMV) from Bucharest is one of the most prestigious higher education schools in Romania. CNMV bears the name of the first Walachian Prince to succeed in the unification of the Romanian principalities. Two years after the school was founded, in 1865, as an extension to “Saint Sava” National College, CNMV became autonomous. In 1868 it was given the status of Gymnasium.

Currently, “Mihai Viteazul” National College has a variety of highly equipped laboratories, a library possessing over 60,000 books, as well as a theatre of 1000 seats.

CNMV and its students, have achieved great results over the years. Apart from national and international academic competitions, our school takes part in numerous extracurricular activities that bring out the best in students: the award-winning choir, the “Orpheus” theatre group, foreign student exchange programmes with the United States and the Netherlands, the “Pache” debate club, “Odyssey of the mind” contest, “Erasmus+” projects and of course “Mishu” MUN club.

As a theoretical high school, "Mihai Viteazul" National College does not prepare the young people to integrate directly into the labour market, but in view of a high level of qualification obtained through university studies. We take pride in the fact that all our graduates are admitted to higher education, to the most prestigious universities in Romania and abroad. Beyond admission, they manage to successfully pass the university studies, confirming the quality of high school education.

Kaufmannsschule II, Hagen, Germany

Today we would like to introduce the coordinating school from Germany:

Kaufmannsschule II is a vocational school specialised in economy and adminstration with full-time
and part-time students which make up a total of about 2,000 students. Part-time students are
apprentices in the areas of legal jobs, the retail sector, freight forwarding and office assistants. 

Fulltime students attend the school to acquire a qualification to study (Fachabitur or Abitur). Two
important subject areas in line with the special focus of the school are Business Administration and
IT for business applications. The school also offers subjects of general education like Maths, P.E.
and German while teaching Business English and Spanish as foreign languages. The teachers of the
school support different kinds of projects to facilitate special interests or talents of students, such as
a three-week course in Business English in London for gifted students (they have to earn money for
the fees by working in local companies during the summer holidays), visits to different regional
companies (professional orientation), a student exchange with a Spanish school or an advertising
project in cooperation with the city of Hagen and Europe in Hagen.

We believe that students can acquire valuable competences in taking part in different types of projects that very often cannot be easily measured or assessed as it changes the personality or attitudes of the participants. The school has also taken part in one successful EU-funded project and is active on eTwinning. Kaufmannsschule II runs its own content management system based on moodle which is used for teaching and the school has taken part in eTwinning projects since 2007. Looking at its pupils it is very striking that the school is very multicultural. In the current school year the school has students from these countries: Germany (85.6%), Turkey (7.5%), Italy (2%), Greece (1.6%), Serbia (0.8%), Bosnia (0.8%), Portugal (0.8%), Poland (0.3%), Croatia (0.2%), Russia (0.2%) and Syria (0.2%). Considering that many students have a German passport the migrational background is even larger taking into account that more students have roots in other countries. The class 11bs2 is a case in point: Whereas all pupils are German their parents and grandparents come from 11 different
countries. In this schoolyear the Kaufmannsschule II is teaching two classes of refugees who were
displaced during the current crises. Regarding the religious beliefs among the students are
Protestants (33%), Catholics (29.5%), Muslims (22.1%) and Orthodox (1.7%). The rest is distributed
among others (3.5%) and no religion (10.2%).

The heterogeneous background also applies the stundents' educational backgrounds. As a school of secondary education students decided to attend Kaufmannsschule II having visited other schools before, such as grammar schools, comprehensive schools and other secondary schools.

About the project

"Empower for Employability" is a project of four European schools from Germany, Greece, Italy and Romania. They teamed up together in order to use their different strengths for helping their students to enhance their chances for working life.  

The four partner schools will develop a programme that leads to developing personal competences in
the students. Participants will be given the CPC to use for their applications in order to enhance their
chances on the labour market.

The certificate will focus on 4 aspects which teachers have identified as the most problematic areas: time management, reflecting yourself, lifelong learning and project management. All areas are seen as vital in the European and national discussion on qualifications for young people before they start working life.

In the area of time management we would like to enable our students to diagnose the use of their time and how this is connected to their academic achievements. This part of the CPC focuses on raising awareness on the value time has and how to use it to achieve their goals taking their age into consideration.

Being able to reflect yourself (strenghts, weaknesses, character) is an important competence for a human being to lead and independent and meaningful life - here we will also focus on the link of strenghts and weaknesses to the decision of finding a job and/or course that fits the profile of the students.
Lifelong learning is widely recognised as one of the most important requirements in today's students, if they fail to succeed in their current courses being led through the process by teachers, how will they cope in the future? The project team believes that enhancing lifelong learning and giving students strategies will be a good investment in their future.

The area of project management will enable students to develop their own plans for life so that they learn how to plan their actions regarding their academic and professional development. They will also learn how to monitor and evaluate their actions.

Our programme of developing a CPC that can be used by other schools can be seen as a
contribution to personal development in the area of academic and professional achievement. The
four areas chosen by the project team are relevant for students and teachers have observed that
many pupils at their school are faced with difficulties in achieving their potential because of lack of
competencies in these areas. Developing the four modules of the CPC will give teachers a set of
tools to use for many students to develop their personalities during their time at the particpating schools.