Estonia – Narva Soldino Gümnaasium, Narva

Narva Soldino Gümnaasium is a municipal secondary school which is located in the town of Narva, the third largest city in Estonia close proximity to EU-Russia border with population 62,000 people.

Narva is a meeting point of two cultures: Estonian and Russian: 94% of the population are Russian speaking, 47% of inhabitants have got Estonian citizenship, 37% are citizens of Russia. The school was founded in 1985. Now it is a fast developing institution that provides a modern educational environment and teaching at a high level. Since 2010 it has been a UNESCO associated school. The school has two languages of instruction: Estonian and Russian. A lot of attention is paid to learn foreign languages – English is compulsory and German is a selective subject. A lot of emphasis is putting on development of individual aptitude and interests of the students. There are 900 students at the age of 7-19 and 72 teachers in our school. Principal teaching language is Russian, complimented with Estonian as state language as well as English and German language. We offer our students three areas of learning and development: Sustainable Health, Economics and Enterprise and Integration to the world community through the European Union.

In curriculum we have also civics lessons where our students learn about democratic processes and history of world democracy. There are support systems at the school targeted to both gifted students and students with physical and psychological problems. Our school Youth Parliament and Student Self-government are in place and very active. Career counseling is also created and empowered by a career coordinator. NSG has 12 years of experience in project work assisted by our experienced project manager. As project work is one of our priorities, students and teachers take active part in various projects. We have a creative and efficient project team. We have a quite long experience with European Projects. We started with LLP Comenius. Then we had several study visits for the headmaster and an in-service training for teachers. We also ran some Etwinning projects, too.

At the moment we are running one KA2 strategic partnerships as partner. If the key person leave her post, we have many experienced teachers who will continue this project. The project ,we are running now is also related to art and culture. We know what we will do, which activities will be done, how we will coordinate. We really want to coordinate this project since we are a UNESCO associated school and we are interested in Cultural Heritage, doing activities for taking attention to the cultural heritage. We want to do our project activities for entering the List of Intangible Cultural heritage in Need of Urgent Safeguarding, for heritage items considered to require urgent measures to keep them alive. As we are UNESCO associated school we will give all project materials to this institution.

Croatia – Srednja strukovna škola, Varaždin

Since 1 September 1992 the school has been operating under the name of Vocational School and has continued the rich tradition of education in the crafts of Varaždin County. This school year there are 530 students aged between 14 and 18 years . They are trained in 32 classrooms and 16 different vocational programmes some of them lasting for four and some for three years.

The teaching staff comprises around 90 teachers and around 20 members of the support staff. The students are educated in the following sectors: applied arts and design (graphic designer, clothing designer), food and meat processing (baker, butcher), protection services (security technician) , wood (carpenter, wood industry designer),textiles and leather (tailor, cobbler, fashion technician) and personal services and other services (hairdresser, beautician, wallpainter, upholsterer ). At the school there are also programmes for students with special needs (assistant baker, assistant carpenter). The school is also attended by students with disabilities. For them we strive to enable successful socialization and involve them in as many school activities as possible.

Within the school there is a sheltered workshop that employs people with disabilities, some of them our former students. We also offer programs in adult education as part of the lifelong learning programs. An integral part of the school are well equipped workshops in the school`s facilities where most of the students complete their practical training classes under the supervision and guidance of their teachers and mentors. In these school facilities they aquire all the necessary job-market-relevant skills needed to become successful young professionals and be competitive on the job market. Some of them also train in small businesses and crafts outside school.

There are also well-equipped general subjects classrooms, IT classrooms, chemistry and cosmetology labs, computer rooms, a library. The school offers all educational facilities necessary to ensure an effective learning surroundings and a friendly environment for social, intellectual and professional development of students and teachers. Every school year our students take part in national and international competitions and have won awards and first places in wood sector, food, hairdressing and design. Hairdressers have won several important awards on various festivals in the country and abroad. Many of the students come from the nearby villages and some of them are disadvantaged for social-economic reasons.

Turkey – Sesim Sarpkaya Fen Lisesi, Tarsus

Our school is located in Tarsus, a very historic city in the south-central Turkey, 20 km inland from the Mediterranean. It is a part of Adana-Mersin metropolitan area. Tarsus forms an administrative district in the eastern part of Mersin Province and lies in the core of Çukurova region. The school building was built in a land measure of 15000 square meters. In this land, there is a school building, a dormitory for girls and boys, a dining hall, a sport field and a big garden. It is an education home that has 16 classrooms, 3 science laboratories (there are a lot of materials for science lessons in these laboratories), a foreign language class (we don’t have computers and headphones for the students), an auditorium, a library ( it doesn’t have many books), a guidance room and a canteen.

All the classes in our school have smart board and all teachers have tablet computer. There are 550 students at the age of 14-18. There are 35 staffs; one headmaster, one via principle of dormitory, and two via principles of school, two civil cervants, 27 teachers, two security guards. Our graduated students win the best universities and subjects in Turkey ( Faculty of Medicine, Dentist, Pharmacy, Architecture, Engineering ) every year. There are many teachers who will be involved in this project are highly motivated and some of them have experience with international projects.So if the key person leave their post they can do it perfectly. We formed an association that is called “Youth and Sport” in our school and this association is working very actively, we are organising sport competitions and art courses for our students, we are trying to do an Erasmus + Youth Projects on behalf of this association. Our schools’ Culture and Literature Clup, Sport Clup, Chess Clup, Excursion Clup are doing their duties very actively to provide the students’ development in social and mental aspect. Chess tournaments, football, voleyball, tennis and basketball tournaments are done in our school and the winners attend the national and regional competitions for representing our school and always get awards.

We are a Science High School so the most important thing for us is attending the Olympic Competitions about science lessons, TUBİTAK competitions, TUBİTAK science fair and to reach this aim, our science teachers direct the students and study with them. The key person is an English teacher, experienced in doing project and she has many certificates about art, IT. We have many experienced teachers taking over her role. It has art culture lesson, we have very different methods that we want to share our project partners for taking attention on cultural heritage.

In order to bring out the students’ own creativity, increase the students’ interests to the arts and culture, we organise “poetry recital ” every year in May, our students read poem accompanied with music, the students who know playing the musical instrument find chance showing own skills.

Czech Republic – Obchodni akademie a Jazykova skola s pravem statni jazykove zkousky, Pisek

The school is situated in south Bohemia and has 240 students. Great emphasis is put on foreign languages and computer skills. Students are from different social background, most of them are commuters from nearby villages.Two foreign languages are taught, German and English, and besides that Economics, Accountancy and Information Technology belong to the most essential subjects. Our special expertise is computer typing where we achive great results in international competitions. Our students are mostly female (80%) and we have very individual approach to them.

We have close relationship with Austrian and German schools and every year Fictional Firm Trade takes place with international participation. We have compact cultural environment, various social layers at school, technical equipment, school complex with a schoolyard, garden and parking places, school canteen, gym, sports hall, good transport accessibility, entrepreneurship and business activities, well equipped gym, complete computer equipment in 5 classroom, good language skills of students – 2 compulsory languages (German and English), the possibility of dissemination of the results ( local newspaper and radio). Disadvantages of our organization is: Majority of students are female (80%), Small school (240 students), No minorities. We will support the project by experienced and skilled teachers with master degree in English, German, Economics, Literature, IT, PE, Accountancy, Science and Maths The school which offers its students the possibility to study High school in the option of Arts, which leads to degrees in Design, Arts, fashion, Music, Drama, etc. The students have an Art class in Primary in English which varies from music to drawing, in Secondary education our pupils develop these abilities through both Music and Drawing together with the activities of design that they can do in the subject of technology. The school has a Dancing room, two music rooms and two drawing rooms and an Assembly hall for performances with capacity for 330 spectators.

There are many teachers who will be involved in this project are highly motivated and some of them have experience with international projects.So if the key person leave their post they can do it perfectly. The key person’s responsibility is cooperate with the other partners when making the project application, provide the professional background to the project activities, keeping in touch with the partners during and after the project and informing the school management about the progress of the project. The IT system administrator will be responsible for providing the IT background of the project (both when we created the official website of the project and when we created the intellectual outputs) and he is also responsible for the financial part of the project. An art and media teacher will guide the participants in the production of advertisements and the media products, such as designing our version of the company logo.

Netherlands – Notre Dame des Anges, Ubbergen

Havo Notre Dame des Anges is a small school.The school has about 570 students at 14-18 years old whom we like to see as individuals and appreciate their efforts and personality. In the school climate security and commitment are keywords. Education is provided in a friendly and open atmosphere.

Our team knows precisely year after year how to achieve with the students the goals we are obliged to achieve and want to achieve so that we can speak of a high quality school. We’re justifiably proud of our good results. The positive school climate, strong efforts to let students get the best from themselves. The school is located in Ubbergen at Nijmegen. The school is in a unique location, surrounded by nature, on the border of country and city. The students come from all over the area.

This results in the student population to a pleasant mix of backgrounds. The school has a rich history of over 100 years, but is firmly rooted in the present tense. Halfway through the 2010-2011 school year a completely new building has been realized, thanks to the help and support of county, township and many environmental organizations and has been integrated into the environment.We also offer optional subjects related to acting and performing. Our school offers students a subject called “Take Care”. There the students visit old people’s homes and day care centers. They also organize events for children. We have frequent visits from the town symphony orchertra and authors in our school. All the 9th graders get a card which offers them dicounts e.g. on concert, theatre and movie tickets. That way we encourage our students to get involved in cultural events. Our students make visits to the library, art museum other museums many times during a school year.

We expect our teachers great commitment and flexibility; genuine interest in students and teaching and an ongoing willingness to learn. We offer a special, small and pleasant working environment with exceptional colleagues and students that we are proud of. We are familiar with many ICT tools (such as PowerPoint, Joomag, Glogster, padlet …), our students even took part in radio shows and created videos and also we are good at literature and performing poem using music. We participated in two ACES (Academy of Central European Schools) projects as well. We worked together with a Bulgarian and a Romanian school.The titles were Advertising: Manipulation or reality and Solidarity and friendship go hand in hand. We made short films on the given topics which have won 2 awards so far. The teachers who are involved in this project work in different departments (science, foreign languages, art and humanities and physical education), all of them are highly motivated and some of them have experience with international projects. The contact person has been involved as an organizer on our school’s side in four international projects (Comenius, ACES ). When she leave her post these experienced teachers will take over her role.