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Kari Lehtonen
Helsinki Metropolia University of Applied Sciences, Finland
Helsinki Metropolia University of Applied Sciences has established a centre for the demonstration and recognition of asylum seekers' and immigrants' professional competence. The centre will assess the needs of asylum seekers and immigrants for supplementary training, as well as promote their integration into Finnish society and speed up their access to the labour market.
The need for a competence demonstration centre is acute particularly in the Helsinki Metropolitan area, where there are large numbers of immigrants and asylum seekers and the best employment opportunities.
The competence demonstration centre's operations will initially be mostly linked to the studies of technology. This is because currently the majority of asylum seekers are men aged 20 to 29 years, many of whom possess training and work experience in the field of technology and a good potential for continuing their higher education studies or finding work once their competence has been recognised. Metropolia's engineering training is the largest and most international in Finland, which gives the UAS the resources to assess foreign engineering degrees and to arrange demonstration examinations for recognising competence.
The competence assessment will first focus on mathematical competence, digital fluency and English competence. The mathematical competence will be assessed using a test comprising of 30-40 mathematics problems. The pilot test will be a traditional written test, but subsequent tests will be STACK-based tests on computers. The problems will represent difficulty levels from secondary schools to basic engineering studies. The pilot test will be in English and Arabic. We hope that competence assessment will help to determine the needs for subsequent supplementary training before entering e.g. proper engineering studies.
The pilot assessment takes place 20.-21.4.2016 at Metropolia. The pilot group consists of roughly 50 asylum seekers who seem to have a good potential for engineering studies. A substantial proportion of asylum seekers state that they have a university degree, from bachelor to doctorate. They have no diplomas to present. 90% of asylum seekers speak Arabic. English competence is variable.