Partners

Sint-Guido-Instituut, Anderlecht, Belgium

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Sint-Guido-Instituut is a Catholic Belgian Dutch-speaking secondary school (students are 12-18 years old), and it’s the coordinator organization of this partnership. It’s situated in an urban environment namely in Anderlecht, a part of Brussels.

The school offers different forms of education:
ASO (general education) : sciences-mathematics / economics-mathematics / social sciences / economics-modern languages.
TSO (technical education) : health and wellbeing / commerce / public relations
BSO (vocational education) : care taking / painter / office and retail / construction
HIGHER EDUCATION : One year of social security education and higher vocational education nurse. These students are older than 18 years old.
It also offers the so called “OKAN-classes”. These are classes for young newcomers (mostly refugees) who do not master Dutch. During one year they get Dutch language lessons. Afterwards they follow the normal classes but still get special guidance. Each year it welcomes between 150- 200 new OKAN-students (this year there are 187 OKAN-students).

In total there are 1021 students in the school and approximately 160 teachers, caretakers, coaches and other staff.

At school there’s a predominantly non-native population. 70% of school’s pupils come from different European and non-European backgrounds, so it’s a very multicultural school. It has 57 different nationalities in our school and a variety of religions.
Only 45 pupils have two Dutch-speaking parents; 190 pupils have one Dutch-speaking parent. All the other pupils do not have family that speaks Dutch.

Most of school’s students have a low socio-economical background. Often their parents (especially the mothers) have not followed any higher education.

Sint-Guido Instituut is part of a larger entity (vzw Sint-Goedele) that includes other secondary schools. This gives the opportunity to collaborate and exchange experiences with other schools in a similar environment. Apart from that it works closely with CLB, the Governmental Center specialized in coaching pupils with difficulties. It supports students with learning disabilities. It provides an extensive system of students counseling.

The school encourages the teachers to follow specialized trainings on a regular basis, both linked to our specific subject as to subjects linked with learning difficulties, methods of blended learning, differentiation in the classroom,… With the aim to increase the wellbeing of the pupils.

During the school years 2014 – 2016 it took part in a Erasmus-project about blended-learning and later on shared the expertise with other colleagues during different workshops. It also created an online platform for teachers from other schools with examples of blended-learning methods. The school is a growing school and it has important values like: innovation, inspiration, new methods of learning skills, differentiation.

Several of it teachers are working on the e-twinning platform. Edith Conings, for example, is a science teacher and works with another school in France on an e-twinning project.

Agrupamento de Escolas de São João da Talha, Portugal

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Agrupamento de Escolas de São João da Talha (the coordinator organisation of the partnership) is a group of 6 schools from kindergarten to secondary school. The target students within this project will be the ones in age between 12-19.
It has 1885 students, 157 teachers within the 6 schools – 4 primary schools (1st-4th grades) with kindergarten, 1 elementary school (5th-9th grade) and 1 secondary school (7th-12th grade) from economical disadvantaged suburbs of Lisbon.

The school programme is:
1. General Education – Science, Economics, Math, Physics and Chemistry, Biology, Foreign Languages (Spanish, French and English), and Arts;
2. Vocational Education – Computer Science, Sports and Gardening;
3. Professional Education – Computer Science, Computer Programming, Electricity;

Located 5 minutes from Lisbon, from North, near a new city centre standing by the main river Tejo.

In the parish lies a roma community, whose children represent a minority group with all the implications in school integration and educational success. In the parish still lies the Reception Centre for Refugees, and that’s why all the schools integrated a numerous different nationalities (28 in total) in the various schools and the existence of a large multicultural classrooms.

The group of schools hosts a large majority of pupils with special educational needs and are headquartered in two different schools two Special Units of Support for multi disabled students (6 to 14 years old). The practice with disabled students (more than 140 identified students in 2016) is well known and there are professional teachers dedicated to this kids.

The student audience belongs to a lower middle class , in which 35,1% of the students are receiving economic support, because of their social provenience, with fewer opportunities (socially and economically). The majority of the population exerts his activity mainly in Lisbon and surroundings. Work obligations do not let parents accompany properly their children at school. There’s a need to develop the entrepreneurial spirit of our students by raising awareness of the social issues from everyday life, attending to a better understand and respect of cultural difference. In that way, the students need to learn more in a way that could open their horizons, in order to be successful in society, and be aware of the others, helping others.

The schools have a quality monitoring system based in CAF (Common Assessment Framework) for Education, that uprise in the last cycle the need of improve learners success and improve discipline and motivation to be in school.

Joniskio “Ausros” gimnazija, Joniskis, Lithuania

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Our school is situated in geographically disadvantaged area, far from main industry centres of our country. Our gymnasium implements some national, local projects, activities in order to enhance motivation, promote interest in academic and after school activities, particularly for students residing in rural areas . Unemployment in our district is 16,3 % , moreover , the government provides students with free lunch at school (29% ). Despite the high number of migration of young families to more attractive places and countries,our school tries to provide to local children active and interesting free time activities.

The gymnasium (secondary school) has the deepest educational traditions and experience in the region. The main aim is to ensure students’ progress, create the best health education, provide them with all further national and international education possibilities. Therefore, gymnasium administration, staff have to look for effective school management ways, apply infrastructure changes, be constantly trained and learn from other European schools. Moreover, all regional schools undergo local infrastructure reform, administrative staff turnover, experience certain changes, seek for the most efficient staff educational traditions and experience in the region. Lots of new education ideas, ways, experience come from its administration and staff. Students from various places of the region attend this particular gymnasium.

There are 490 students in our school today. Our country and even our region is not attractive for refugees.

Gymnasio Gennadiou, Gennadi, Rhodes Island, Greece

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Gymnasio Gennadou is a general lower and upper secondary school on the island of Rhodes. There are 22 teachers and 233 learners. The school is located in a rural area, south of the island and receives students from different villages in the area.

The area of the school had a rapid tourism development lately and as a result it has attarcted many financial immigrants who can find a summer time job in the hotel industry. Due to this new social context, almost half of the school population comes from families with different cultural backgrounds. The school implemetnts projects for the integration of immigrants and refugees and tries to offer a friendly and welcome atmosphere for all. There are also about 5% students with special needs, mainly learning difficulties.

The school offers general secondary education for students aged 12-18. But the school also offers extra curricular activities in order to respond to the absence of cultural and social life in the area by organising events and activities with the local communities. The school tries to connect formal and non formal education and to develop the local community by offering new learning experiences such as reading club, first aid club, volunteer club, local magazine clubs, civic competence, digital skills. The extra curricular activities are implemented by school teachers in cooperation with non formal organisations in the area.

The school tries to establish connections with other schools on the island and to work together with students and teachers from other nearby schools at a regular basis. The school also has European orientation and participates in Erasmus projects. The school participates in consortiums of Directorate of Secondary Education in Dodecanese because it is very active in projects that relate to educational and administartive matters.

In addition the school promotes digital culture and digital citizenship is a priority. The school tries to encourage both school performance and social skills.

Liceo Statale “Leonardo” Scientifico – Linguistico, Giarre, Italy

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Type of the school: Secondary school. Number of students: 1071. Age of students: from 14 to 18. Number of teachers: 100

Education field: Maths, Physics, Science and foreign languages. Goals: preparing for university. Experiences: exchange students programs, apprenticeship periods in factories and firms. Social activities: welcome activities, sport competitions, trips, summer courses in Great Britain, Spain, Gemany, France. Quality of the education:the standards are rather high as our students often rank first positions at Maths, Physics, Science and Language regional and national Olympics.

Courses offered to students: History and Civics, Philosophy, Geography, Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, Biology and Environmental education, Information and Communication Technologies, Mother tongue Italian, Foreign languages-English, French, German and Spanish, Religion / ethics, P.E. and Sports.

Environment of the school urban and the city is urban, it has various commercial activities and a tourist port.

Number of students in total, 1071 with socio-economical background of students: middle-class, upper middle-class. The number of students with special needs is low, mainly problems connected to dyslessia and autism.

The scope of school: national, European (as it receives funds from the E.C.) and International as some of it students participate to exchange programs in foreign countries all over the world.

Students need to acquire an high cultural level to enter University and the job world. Therefore they need to master more than a foreign language; get Informatics and Technological skills; reach multicultural integration.

The priorities of students are: To improve their multiculturality and foreign integration; to improve their language skills through the achievement of English, French, German, Spanish language certifications according to the QCER European levels; to achieve ECDL and AUTOCAD certifications; to implement the use of technological instruments in order to develop scientific skills.

The students’ level of interest in school and education is quite high for most students.

The staff has partecipated on various training programs, both at national and local level in order to enhance:
• individualized teaching and learning with the use of new media;
• use of CLIL methodology;
• cooperative learning strategies.
At national level collaborates with the University of Catania for projects concerning Mathematics and Engineering, with the University of Urbino for Mathematics and Foreign Languages. The school collaborates with EFS Exchange Programs. Some teachers have participated to Comenius Project and Etwinning Projects in the past years.

Needs of school: The school’s main aim is to support teachers in achieving an high specialised competence in :
– Problem based education and collaborative learning;
– students’ learning strategies;
– use of technology in a multimedia teaching method;
– assessment methods; – Multiculturalism in Schools and foreign integration;
– Special needs education.

Euregio-Gymnasium, Bocholt, Germany

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In the medium sized town of Bocholt (pop. 73.000), located in the rural area of the Westmünsterland, very close to the Dutch border, there are four Gymnasiums, i.e. secondary schools with the highest level of education, qualifying students for university.

Currently the Euregio-Gymnasium has got 930 students from the grades 5 up to 12 (ages 11 – 19) and approximately 90 teachers.
According to this local situation in Bocholt the four schools have adopted and developped their own individual profiles. Our school has basically specialized in the MINT subjects and puts a special stress on education in natural sciences and ICT. Moreover – as the only Gymnasium in town – we offer a special course in Technical Education (which is very uncommon in a Gymnasium because this subject traditionally belongs to vocational education). The second pillar of our school’s profile is the the variety of languages that we offer. Students can learn up to four languages (English, French, Spanish and Latin) and we try to get them into contact with our already existing partners in Europe (Lithuania, Poland, Spain), but also with the educational institutions in Kenya, India, Bolivia and Guatemala that are supported by our school’s own charity organization “Eine Welt durch Bildung” (Creating One World By Education).

The main goal and sum of our pedagogical and educational work is “making students strong”. That means our school has created a general concept to help young people in many different ways to develop strong personalities, so that they will be able to cope with the challenges of growing up, of living and learning at school and especially of life after school in a globalized “small world”.
At the moment we face three challenging tasks concerning this main goal:
First task:
Digital education is a vital part of this concept. We consider ICT and Digital Learning as the crucial basic skills for learning at school and for – formal or informal – life long learning after school. At the moment our forces and ressources in ICT are limited both by technical and by structural problems (hardware environments; limited access to the Internet etc.). So we want to improve and enhance the conditions and strategies of Digital and ICT learning at our school by creating a strategic network of partner schools. We expect positive effects for the MINT subjects, but also for the other subjects, especially the language departments, because we intend to create and use new ICT-based ways of learning together with our existing and future partners.
Second task:
We’ve got a rising number of students with Special Educational Needs in the grades 5 to 7, so inclusive learning and teaching is an important challenge at our school. We are steadily working on concepts to meet the needs of these children and to successfully integrate them into our classes. We hope that Digital Learning can offer us new and individual ways of creating courses and learning environments that are more effective and better suited for these children.
Third task:
In 2015 an unexpectedly high number of refugees and migrants came to Germany. Also at our school we tried to help and we introduced a special class for them. Right now we teach about 25 children and youths of different ages, nationalities, cultures and language skills. Our challenge is to better understand their problems and needs and to successfully integrate them into our regular classes. Even if not all of them will reach the Gymnasium level of education it is still our responsibility to “make them strong” enough for life after school, for the requirements of the labour market and for future educational opportunities.
In order to build up a European professional network to work on these three task we have already taken part in a Erasmus+ KA1 teacher training programs in 2015 – 2019.