School of the community: Road guide for active parents Erasmus Project

Project Title

School of the community: Road guide for active parents

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 : School Exchange Partnerships

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2019

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: International cooperation, international relations, development cooperation; Intercultural/intergenerational education and (lifelong)learning; Inclusion – equity

Project Summary

The project aims at the exchange of good practices and the initiation of new models to encourage parents’ participation in school life as a key factor in enhancing the effectiveness of education and training, as well as preventing negative trends in school education – early dropping out of education system, increasing the incidence of aggressive behavior at school, and diminished public credit to the teaching profession.
Project activities seek parents as an ally as an important factor in creating a supportive and motivating environment for encouraging the learning and cultivation of social, professional and personal skills in young people with a view to their better personal and professional realization after graduation of high school education.
The activities were implemented by 5 secondary schools in Bulgaria (project coordinator), Italy, Romania, Turkey and Cyprus. The partnership is based on a common understanding of the role of parents in supporting pedagogical work. Although they have a different profile, partner schools have a common characteristic, they carry out their work in underdeveloped economic areas and their target group is students coming from families with low incomes and unfavorable social status, which brings additional challenges to the learning and education process. The partner consortium consists of both schools participating for the first time in Key Action 2 projects and more experienced schools with experience in coordinating such projects – this also allowed knowledge and expertise to be shared in project management and to each participating school to build capacity in international partnerships. Based on their previous experience, each school contributed to the project implementation – so that all partners were able to accept the project as their cause, to feel equitable and useful and to retain their motivation to build beyond the achieved results and after the end of the project period.
A 6-day international event was organized in Kyustendil, Bulgaria, in order to explore and exchange the expeirence of the participating schools regarding the involvement of parents and local communities in the school life. Each school was represented by a mixed team of teachers and parents, who were involved in group discussions, interactive presentations and other non-formal learning activities in order to best learn from each other and initiate common solutions for similar challenges.
In order to increase the popularity of project results, each school organized public event – live and/or online, in order to share best practices and information. Articles about the project were published by local media and on the social network platforms. A special WhatsApp project group was created, where pictures and videos from events have been published. A photographic record was prepared, which stores on paper the visual information about the activities performed and the results obtained.
In the long run, each of the participating schools has declared its readiness to continue to attract new community stakeholders to foster parents’ participation in school life – support will be sought from local authorities to legislate for incentives for parents who devote time and personal work to support the education process and out of class at school.
Each of the schools participating in the project will collect information for 3 years after the end of the activity in order to be able to analyze the impact of the increased parental participation in preventing the early exit of the educational system and reducing the incidence of aggressive behavior in school. The partners also declare a long-term commitment to the project cause by committing themselves to planning new partnerships again and following new initiatives to reform local education policies so that parental participation in school life is a permanent factor in supporting the work of pedagogues aimed at providing high-quality education in secondary schools.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 39372 Eur

Project Coordinator

PGIM “Yordan Zahariev” & Country: BG

Project Partners

• LICEUL TEORETIC MARIN PREDA – TURNU MAGURELE
• EIDIKO SXOLEIO APOSTOLOS VARNAVAS AMMOCHOSTOU
• IPSSAT ROCCO CHINNICI
• Profilo Mesleki ve Teknik Anadolu Lisesi