Fairplay4EU Erasmus Project

Project Title

Fairplay4EU

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: Health and wellbeing; Teaching and learning of foreign languages; EU Citizenship, EU awareness and Democracy

Project Summary

The Fairplay4EU project was an idea of the Pierre Valdo middle school, a French public school who wanted to go on with its European policy started in 2009. In addition to the two previous Comenius projects, we wanted to find a universal language which could allow the European pupils to develop civic, scholar and social skills in an easy and original way. After Esperanto and music, Sport – and more specifically football – was chosen for this project in
order to discover the countries involved. It was also a way to bond on an academic point of view as well as on a social, interactive level; beyond borders and generations. « Fairplay» was the cornerstone as a spirit of responsability and ethics. We also wanted to show the pupils that beyond the trivial practice of sports or the consumption of it through media – especially in the case of mass entertaining sports- they are vectors of values and are important stakes in the world we are living in. Teachers and schools eventually benefited from it thanks to the pedagogically dynamic and project based approach.
A partnership was built to complete the school’s network, insure the representativeness of all countries involved and use every partner’s skills and specific abilities. After a first failed attempt in 2015, the project was approved in 2016 with a partnership of 5: Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Lithuania and France. All were already used to European projects. The French coordinator had never worked with these countries except for Italy, though the school’s location – Sicily – was brand new and exotic. Some partners such as the Dutch had very specific and useful skills to provide (IT and arts).
The final task was the creation of a «Fairplay Without Borders Guide» that would compile all the project’s realizations. We also created a «Multilingual Sport Dictionnary». It was articulated around five learning, teaching and training activities (one in each country). Each one of them made pupils work on themes related to sport and allowed them to mingle and blend in while developing their skills through the exchanges. The preparation of each exchange was the opportunity to work on various subjects with various materials (History and Geography, Languages, IT, Arts, PE, Sciences…). A website was also created by the Dutch school as the main communication tool. «Erasmus Corners» in each school branded them with a European touch and allowed us to communicate on the project as it went on.
Two years after, all the objectives have been fullfilled and beyond (such as the final number of students involved in learning, teaching and training activities). The final production (Fairplay Guide) shows the variety and density of the activities. Diagnosis evaluations and feedback evaluations show obvious progress in basic Geography, knowledge about the E.U and in the relationship with languages – especially English. Self confidence,
autonomy, curiosity – eventhough hard to quantify – have grown in pupils who are largely from poor, tough and/or isolated neighberhoods. Teachers also benefited a lot from this project: new pedagogical approaches, improvement through variety and confrontation to other schemes in and out of their workspace.The schools and the cities involved saw an improvement of their image. They are now fully and openly supporting The Erasmus policy.
This project reinforced the international identity of the schools. This will keep going on thanks to new projects in progress and the newly inspired teachers working them.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 107130 Eur

Project Coordinator

Collège Pierre Valdo & Country: FR

Project Partners

• Istituto Comprensivo Alessandro Manzoni
• Sirvintu r. Gelvonu gimnazija
• Heinrich-Böll-Gesamtschule Europaschule
• SintLucas