Implementing climate change objectives in agrotechnical schools Erasmus Project

Project Title

Implementing climate change objectives in agrotechnical schools

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 2020

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Regional dimension and cooperation; Social/environmental responsibility of educational institutions; Environment and climate change

Project Summary

Climate change will have major impacts on the society and will generate significant changes in the way we will live in 20 or 30 years from now. The pupils currently trained in the 6 agrotechnical schools of the partnership will directly experience these changes during their lives and professional career. In addition to preparing them to today’s reality of the job-market, the schools thus have a societal responsibility to prepare their pupils to these forthcoming evolutions.

This project will involve about 15-16 years old pupils following a general, technical or vocational training in one of the partner schools. The pupils will identify the environmental challenges that the society needs to tackle and will have to imagine the consequences it will have on their life and Professional activity in the future. The pupils will work together around the following question: what will be the skills and jobs required in 20 years? At the occasion of visits in the different partner schools, the pupils will collectively discover several transversal topics (such as natural biotopes and ecosystems, water resources and flood management, evolution of food production…) and work together on the implementation of concrete actions to answer to the climate change challenge in or near each school.

In between the school visits, pupils will work together on “Sneaky Card” challenges using eTwinning to share the results of the challenge completion in their school. The Sneaky Cards will be produced by the pupils during each visit, based on what they have learnt all together. After the visit, each school will play one card and pass it on to another school, who will then complete the challenge and pass it on to another school etc. At the end of the project, schools will have produced together a fill Sneaky Cards game with 36 cards on 6 different topics, which will be shared with other schools in Europe and will continued to be played by other pupils after the end of the project.

Based on the work of the pupils, this project will lead to a more general cogitation of the school communities about the future of agrotechnical schools in connection with the climate change societal challenge: what is the added value of agrotechnical schools for the society? How can they adapt the trainings and education they provide to anticipate the evolution of the jobs in the next 20 or 30 years? The schools’ teachers and management teams will exchange experiences on innovative solutions they are testing to provide trainings able to answer these challenges (permaculture, aquaponics, urban farming, adaptation of crops…). It is expected to lead to the sustainable implementation of innovative solutions in each of the partner schools, with direct benefits for the entire school community and the future professional capacity of their pupils.

The exchange between pupils and teachers will drive the values of European citizenship within the school communities, enabling the participants to get a better acknowledgement of the cross-border dimension of their region and of the action of the European Union with regards to climate change. It will also contribute to promote a responsible citizenship, through the understanding of the role that each of them can play to contribute to a better world, in connection with the values of solidarity and cooperation between people. The project will also benefit to the cultural openness of the pupils and to the improvement of their language skills, both in English (working language of the project) and in the languages of the border region (French & Dutch).

This project involves 6 agrotechnical schools all located in the same cross-border region between France and Belgium (Flanders). Through this project, the schools want to develop a new dynamic for cross-border cooperation that will lead to a sustainable partnership. It is expected that the project will enable the schools to get to know each other and to find a common understanding for the development of other projects in the future, especially long-term mobility of their pupils to follow studies or an internship in another school of this partnership. In the longer term, this school exchange project will thus contribute to the development of cross-border training between French and Belgian secondary agrotechnical vocational schools. This will have a direct impact on the cross-border job market, in a region that is today facing strong disparities of unemployment level on each side of the border.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 158010 Eur

Project Coordinator

Syndicat des hauts-champs & Country: FR

Project Partners

• IETP Hoymille
• de wijnpers
• Provinciaal Instituut voor Biotechnisch Onderwijs
• Provinciaal Instituut voor Technisch Onderwijs
• Provinciaal Technisch Instituut