School Integration Exchange Hub+ Erasmus Project

Project Title

School Integration Exchange Hub+

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for school education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2020

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Social/environmental responsibility of educational institutions; Access for disadvantaged; Early School Leaving / combating failure in education

Project Summary

The project aims to tackle early school leaving by the creation of a cross-sectoral network for sharing and transferring good practices. The main focus is on the prevention of early school leaving (ESL) of pupils from vulnerable groups. The partnership brings together players of a different type, civil society organization with new networking solutions, a national public body responsible for the educational integration of children from minorities, and training center with more than five decades of experience in training to the targeted groups of vulnerable students and migrant from the diverse socioeconomic backgrounds. in order to promote collection and exchange of knowledge and to improve practices involving different perspectives and knowledge, the project addresses the following priorities:
– Developing new interactions that provide opportunities for access to disadvantaged,
– Gather and redevelop creative and best practices aimed to remove obstacles within the school education system that may hinder young people from specific target groups in completing education. – Foster the professionalization of teachers and headteachers in the sphere of prevention of ESL of disadvantaged pupils and, above all, of the establishment of ‘professional communities’ from the involved teachers, pedagogical counselors and experts from the three partner organizations. The project will be a cross-institutional, interdisciplinary team that works on challenges over the longer term and try to devise solutions to the issues faced in their respective local schools in North Macedonia, Bulgaria, and Spain.
– Support the large network of schools they work with to develop conducive and supportive learning environments that focus on the needs of individual pupils through developing adaptable, relevant, and engaging curricula and flexible education pathways.

When elaborating on the project methodology we adopted the following approach: for each need that was identified corresponds an innovative feature of the project concept.
1. To develop a cross-sectoral platform of exchange of know-how and practices between partners with different initiatives in this area and of different backgrounds and missions, thus fostering a mutual enriching learning process. Corresponding innovative feature: the partnership includes an appropriate mix of complementary participating organizations with necessary profile and expertise that cover the whole chain of actors responsible for creating inclusive school strategies and ESL prevention models: national authority responsible for creating strategy and action plans on the national level – trainers of teachers that have the experience of delivering training for intercultural competence, leadership and innovative teaching methods to teachers in the different levels of school education and finally the directors, teachers and pedagogical advisors/counselors that work directly with the targeted pupils.
2. To ensure access to a wide variety of consolidated comprehensive and cross-sectoral prevention and intervention models and strategies tailored to the specified target groups. Corresponding innovative feature: the project envisages not only the collection of best practices in the sphere but also their practical adaptation. A tangible result of the project will be the Inventory of good practices described in more detail in the following parts of the project.
3. To promote the “whole-school approach ” and the broader issue of engaging peers, school leaders, and family because of the potential impact of community on drop out measures. Corresponding innovative feature: The project proposes an approach for adapting the collected good practices in order to open up the school setting as the school cannot and must not address independently the broad range of social, economical and learning needs that affect the academic performance of pupils from vulnerable groups. Different flexible intervention methods will be promoted that can be adapted by individual schools and communities to build long-lasting commitment and collaboration from policymakers, society, family, and other stakeholders. An essential important step here will be to provide institutions’ leaders with the essential content knowledge and materials necessary to develop successful school/community collaborations (reliable, flexible, adaptable and appealing awareness-raising and advocacy tools)
4. Continuous professional development and improvement of the competences of teachers and school management, advisors and counselors, need for school staff to gain a deeper understanding of ESL, enhance awareness on their own role in preventing it and to develop the skills to work with other professions and partners, in a “whole-school approach” (design, development, testing and sharing of specific training modules and support multimedia tools)
There will be two levels of collection and adaptation of good practices to be included in the inventory.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 43500 Eur

Project Coordinator

Zdruzenie Evropsko Gragjanstvo-Akcija Bitola & Country: MK

Project Partners

• Centre for Educational Integration of Children and Students from Ethnic Minorities
• CEIP SAN CARLOS