PORTUGAL | SPAIN | ITALY | AUSTRIA | GREECE
Agrupamento de Escolas de São João da Talha, Portugal
PT-Brochure | School Presentation Video
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.
Instituto Educación Secundaria Severo Ochoa, Spain
ES-Brochure | School Presentation Video
IES Severo Ochoa is situated in Elche, Spain. It has about 1000 students and 70 teachers from several educational levels divided into a Secondary and a Vocational School. Regarding to the vocational school we teach about Commerce and Marketing, Management and Information Technology and Comunication Students. The students are divided into several shifts in the morning and in the evening. In this project takes part the Secondary School.
Istituto D’Istruzione Superiore “R. Piria” Rosarno, Italy
IT-Leaflet | School Presentation Video
The Institute of High Education “Raffaele Piria” was founded in 1969. It is situated in Rosarno, a large village in the province of Reggio Calabria, in southern Italy. Set in a beautiful green spacious campus, IIS “R. PIRIA“ is a wonderful place to study and to work.
It is the only provider of education to young people of Rosarno and the surrounding countries for the age range 15 to 18/19. The Institute of High Education “Raffaele Piria” is made up of three types of schools: 1) The High Scientific School offers a humanistic and scientific cultural education which gives a preparation, an education and a type of training, allowing the students to successfully continue university studies in all degree programs and in all kinds of faculties such as medical, paramedical, scientific and technological. The school is a ECDL Center and a “Trinity Test Center” for the certification of language skills. The institute has: a Radio Web, Computer, language, chemistry, physics cinematography labs and a theater. It also has a music band; 2) The Technical Institute of Administration, Finance and Marketing; 3) The ‘Professional Institute for Services to Agriculture and Management of forest and mountain resources.
The Institute has a total of about 1.200 students and employs 140 members of teaching staff and non-teaching staff. Our pupils are aged between 15 and 19. All the staff closely collaborate with the principal of the school, to organize events that aim to involve all the cultures present on the territory. Many educational trips to know the territory are constantly organized to make the students be conscious of the world of work and make them understand the needs and the situations of the place where they live.
The school is a cutting-edge one and it has obtained numerous and important awards in science, computer, mathematical and linguistic scope, which, in some cases, were delivered by the Ministers of the Republic. Besides, the school has received important rewards as the one assigned personally by the Italian President Giorgio Napolitano for the commitment of the school to the National seminar “Stupor Mundi” and the National Award “Gerbera Gialla” granted by the President of the Senate, Pietro Grasso. Moreover the students have carried out many plays in English and founded a school musical band which often gives concerts for the community. The school is also the building where many meetings with the participation of scientists of national fame are held.
The areas of specific expertise, and specific social context of relevant for this project fall distinctly into two categories. I.I.S.” R. Piria” has a distinct dichotomy of activity and experience relevant to the development of internationalism. The school has a huge range of experience and excellent current practices in developing and establishing working relationships with its local community, for the mutual benefit of the school, its students and the community. However international relationships do not match the local excellent practice. The causes for this are identifiable in the specific social context: 1) The school is located in an economically and socially disadvantaged area in southern Italy, devastated from a persistent economic crisis and by the abandonment of the most disadvantaged areas by young people looking for a job. The data produced by the national offices for statistics, record that the unemployment rate in the province of Reggio Calabria, is 23.4% of the population. The share of loans at risk is high (36%), the average family assets is low, the export share of GDP is less than 2%, the provision of nursery schools covers less than 2% of users , the school drop-out rate is high. The annual “Sole 24 Ore“ survey on the quality of life of the Italian provinces in 2014, revealed that it was just the province of Reggio Calabria, to have the worst placing in these first three areas: Standard of living, Business and Employment Services. 2) Because of huge areas of citrus and its proximity to the port of GioiaTauro, the largest port of transhipment in the Mediterranean Sea, Rosarno is facing a permanent refugee emergency. In fact, the country is home to thousands of Ghanaian immigrants, Moroccans, Ivorians, Malians, Sudanese and Syrian war refugees who come here in search of work, with all the social problems coming with them. Actually Rosarno is considered the southern Italian door for illegal immigration and for the potential terrorists who, coming together with the others can penetrate in Italy and from here, can reach all the north European countries . In fact the security measures are reinforced. IIS “R. Piria” is a very warm, caring school that believes in developing confident and well-balanced young people that believe in themselves. Respect and tolerance are central to the school value set. If this application is successful it will support a process of addressing this dichotomy.
BHAK und BHAS Gänserndorf, Austria
Gerhard Antl (The Austrian principal) Born in 1956, he studied English and History at the University of Vienna. (Graduation in 1981) He has been teaching English and History for 36 years and was appointed principal of the College for Business Administration and the Secondary Business School in Gänserndorf (Bundeshandelsakademie und Bundeshandelsschule Gänserndorf) in 2005. He has been awarded several decorations for honorary cultural work.
Vera Lindtner (The Austrian coordinator) Teaches business administration, accountancy, ICT, project management and training firms. Work experience: 20 years of teaching
The BHAK Gänserndorf is a College for Business Administration in Austria and therefore a vocational school teaching students from the age of 14 to 19. It is located in the political district of Gänserndorf which is the largest district in Lower Austria with borders to the EU countries Slovakia and the Czech Republic. The town of Gänserndorf – 20 km northeast of Vienna – has about 10 000 inhabitants.
The school provides a comprehensive commercial education. Apart from rooting the European idea in our students and fostering an intercultural, European awareness the school partnership also aimed at improving the students’ language competence. Using English as the project language is seen as a key aspect of this school partnership.
Our students also get specific training in project management. Over the last eight years this has been based on a unique cooperation with an Austrian software company which has developed a software tool for project management, which is available in German and English and can also be used in schools. Presenting this tool to our project partners is one aspect of this multilateral school partnership as we are allowed to use this software tool for this partnership free of charge. Our students made active use of their expertise in project management and held workshops for our project partners.
In addition our students knew how eTwinning could be brought into the project by installing some parts of the project in eTwinning with some workshops prepared for our school partners. With the help of eTwinning and PM-software the BHAK Gänserndorf made the school partnership comprehensible for the five National Agencies as well as for local school authorities and political communities. These institutions could be regularly informed about the progress of the ERASMUS KA2 school-to-school project over the three year period.
10o Gymnasio Iraklioy, Greece
GR-Leaflet | School Presentation
The 10th Junior High School of Iraklio is a public school with a mentionable number of students (about 300) located at a suburb of Iraklio, Crete, Greece. Students attending the school are aged 12-15 mostly from the areas nearby (Giofyros, Estavromenos and Tsalikaki) while there are a number of students who come to school from rural areas by bus. The students are from a wide range of social and academic backgrounds. The school is getting more and more multicultural because they have more and more students coming from different countries, such as Albania, Bulgaria, Romania and Morocco. These students are always very hard working and enrich school life. When our students finish our school all of them continue to one of several types of secondary school, general or vocational.
Now in Greece due to financial crisis the number of children is reducing and some schools must be closed. It is big challenge for our school – to be attractive enough for our students and parents. In addition to regular work we organise and take part in sport activities, we have school choir and school plays, we organize educational trips to other parts of Greece, we engage our students to philanthropic international activities like ActionAid, we encourage our students to participate frequently to our website. Our students have had an active participation in different projects and programs. There have been environmental projects being carried out in our school such as EURONET 50 / 50 and projects for local tradition, health and nutrition. Also they have been very active with e-twinning projects, having worked on 5 different topics, with various schools from all over Europe and acquiring a European Quality Label. In 2012-2014 they participated in a COMENIUS project with 4 other countries about photography ( 2012- -1-PL1-COM06-28256 3 called «Focus On Europe») (http://focusoneurope.is-great.net ). This project has given to students and teachers expertise in the Art of Photography during various seminars, photo workshops and exhibitions implemented and they would like to expand also to other Visual Arts. Now the school takes part in an Erasmus+ KA1 project (2014‐1‐EL01‐KA101‐000187 – called: “Our School Meets Europe!”) (http://ourschoolmeetseurope.oo.gd) for teacher training in new ICT Technologies and School Management. We have got modern computer lab (with 13 workstations) and another outdated but refurbished (with 10 workstations) and interactive boards in four of our classrooms trying our best to modernize and improve our teaching methods. Also the last two years the building of the school has doubled in size giving space and extra labs for technology, art and a huge library to implement activities.