The Advanced Technical School for Hotel Management and Tourism Services decided in 2019 to partner with the Italian Tourism School Elena Cornaro of Jesolo to provide its students high quality education and training that are in line with both national and international labour market requirements. Through this project, IOM worked with Italian training authorities, the Egyptian Ministry of Education, as well as Italian and Egyptian employers in order to improve the quality of training at a tourism school in Fayoum to meet the needs of major hospitality employers in Italy and Egypt and to harmonize with EQF qualifications levels. This included developing a new curriculum, improving the physical training facilities, re-training teachers, and establishing communication networks between the tourism school and industry employers.

The project has also established a database for international job matching which includes use of international occupation standard classifications (ISCO) to enhance employer understanding of candidate skills. The database is currently integrating an evaluation component based on European Training Foundation (ETF) methodology, thereby further enhancing European employers’ ability to understand and assess the skills of Egyptian candidates in the database. It forms part of a wider ETF program in Europe’s ‘neighbouring’ nations. Overall, the project aims to match qualified Egyptian workers better with the labor needs of foreign employers by enhancing training to meet labor market needs and improving the transparency of information systems.