Platon en crampons Erasmus Project

Project Title

Platon en crampons

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 Schools Only

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2016

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Early School Leaving / combating failure in education; Gender equality / equal opportunities; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses

Project Summary

Our “collège Victor Hugo” (secondary school, students aged from 11 to 15 years old) is located in the city centre of Narbonne, a city of 53,000 inhabitants (2016). The city is on the eastern side of the Aude département, on the Mediterranean Coast of the new Occitanie region. With its Mediterranean coast, the Aude département is a European crossroads between southern Europe and northern Europe. Agriculture is one of the main resources of its hinterland. However, the département is the third poorest département of France. Most of the students that the collège welcomes are socially disadvantaged (54% of them come from socially disadvantaged families). Secondary school students from the département can be characterized by their lack of ambition and their lack of mobility linked to the social issues they encounter. Our school agenda aims at increasing the ambitions of all students, either for their future studies or their future careers: an increase of the number of students in lycées is looked after, be it in “lycées généraux” or vocational lycées. Moreover, we want to reduce the drop-out rate and open our students onto the world to favour mobility projects. The project aimed at including all the types of students we welcome in order to promote the social and cultural cohesion which is of great importance in our school agenda and in our European project: socially disadvantaged students and special need students were part of the programme. With this project, our students were meant to acquire immediate skills linked to the experiences they would live. On the long term, students would get an open-mindedness on Europe and mobility skills which would be increased thanks to this first trip abroad -for most of them. Colaiste Iognaid (Saint Ignatius College) is located in Galway, Ireland. It is a Jesuit secondary school which welcomes middle-class and upper middle-class students mostly; yet, 22% of students are socially disadvantaged and 10% of students have special needs. The school teaches the jesuit values of liberalism, pluralism and openness to difference of all types. In 1969, the school decided to become a non fee paying school, which would have no uniform and would have a particular emphasis on the Irish language. The school has excellent results and ranks among the best secondary schools in Ireland. The city of Galway has a roughly equivalent population (60,000 inhabitants) and a location on the coast too; yet, economic activities are more numerous thanks to Galway’s position as the 4th city of Ireland with its numerous businesses and research centres. The two schools share the same passion for rugby, one of the most popular sports in their respective regions.Thanks to this sport, which allows meetings and exchanges between students, teachers from both schools can explore their economic and professional environments.
The project was a success thanks to the involvement of all the teachers upholding the project and to the school principals who have always supported them. The 100 mobilities planned in the project (50 on the French side and 50 on the Irish side) have been fully achieved and even more. On both sides, the mobilities have included at least 30% of special needs students of socially disadvantaged students (on the French side, for instance, 12 students came from “Segpa” out of 46 students, many of whom were on social grants; on the Irish side, special needs students were favoured too so as to reach the 30% level). For each country, 4 students became the “ambassadors” of their school and arrived before the big school group. They stayed in host families for more than 3 weeks and a half and discovered the economic environments of the partner city before their classmates. Each time, these 2 boys and 2 girls from each country did an internship in many companies of the European partner city. Then, some of these companies received the whole school groupe for a visit, which was partly guided by an ambassador. A documentary was shot when the French school group stayed in Ireland. It was shown to the students and their families after their return back to France. A picture book was also compiled and shown to the families while 2 ambassadors told the audience their experiences in Ireland. Strong links have been created between students received in host families and their penpals, in particular with the ambassadors, many of whom have visited their host families again in private trips after the project was finished. Similarly, all the students who have experienced a mobility still keep in touch with their Irish friends, mainly thanks to social media and the wish to study abroad later has sharply increased among them.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 64350 Eur

Project Coordinator

Collège Victor Hugo & Country: FR

Project Partners

• colaiste iognaid