Raising Expectations through Erasmus+ Erasmus Project

Project Title

Raising Expectations through Erasmus+

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 2014

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Early School Leaving / combating failure in education; EU Citizenship, EU awareness and Democracy; Environment and climate change

Project Summary

While our Strategic School Partnership had the acronym, “Global Citizenship Steps in Europe”, its formal title was, “Raising Expectations through Erasmus+”. We wanted our pupils to work through a cross-curricular project featuring four modules: Climate Change, Sustainability, Migration and Citizenship. These modules would inform pupils about major issues that our world faces and how human behaviour impacts on these issues.
And through this modular work we wanted to deliver specific objectives. These objectives included: improving the attainment of pupils, and especially of those deemed to be at risk of dropping out of the education system; improving the attainment of pupils who struggled with literacy and numeracy; seeing cultural diversity and cultural heritage as strengths, and utilising these strengths to develop ideals of global citizenship within our school communities; improving the ICT and digital competences of pupils; developing the professional skills of teachers and further engaging the parents and local communities with our schools.
Seven strong experienced partners participated in this project, some of whom we had previously worked with – Portugal, Hellenic Republic, Germany, Spain and Sweden. They were more than willing to participate again. We also sourced a school from Slovakia with a very strong work ethic and with a strong interest in environmental issues. The Portuguese partner was, in fact, a group of schools ranging from pre-school to upper second level school, and the Swedish partner had two schools involved. The age of pupils ranged from 3-17 and in total over 1500 pupils were involved. We agreed on this cross-curricular theme that we believed could be adapted to include pupils of all abilities. In our plan we put a strong emphasis on pupil participation and attainment, and on teacher development.
Over the two years of the project we worked through our four modules of work: sustainability, citizenship, climate change and migration. Each partner used this shared template but had the flexibility to adapt the module to suit the needs of its pupils. The module topics were integrated to school curricula, they appealed to pupils and constantly featured in news bulletins. Thus pupils engaged and participated readily in the project. Schools created garden. Pupils sowed seeds and harvested the crops. Schools participated in “The Crocus Project” to remind pupils of the child victims of the Holocaust. Each school created a nature trail and partners collaborated to create an online nature trail. Pupils discovered that the climate change might be directly linked to sustainability or migration. We published collaborative newsletters on each module with partners contributing articles to all newsletters. We created a dedicated project website, a project logo, a two-year project calendar, and a project song. Pupils have learned about Scratch coding.
In working through these modules pupils have gained knowledge and have enhanced their understandings of climate change, social justice, sustainable development, diversity, migration and globalisation. They have developed skills of expression, of thinking critically, of respecting others and resolving conflict. They have reinforced their sense of identity, enhanced their self-esteem, and engaged and participated in discussion and debate. They have learned that they too can make a difference at local levels. They understand that their behaviour can have impacts on others and on their environments. This knowledge makes them aware of each individual’s importance in relation to the environment and sustainability. If many people take small steps together they can make significant impacts.
This partnership has served to raise not just pupils’ expectations of themselves, but their expectations of a better environment. Pupils now understand and appreciate the role that they can play in creating such an environment. The introduction of coding has been very successful. Pupils really enjoyed coding. It allowed them to be creative and helped them to collaborate and to communicate more effectively. It enabled them to develop their problem solving skills. And they have the possibility of accessing and working on their Scratch projects outside of school. Partners will continue with coding after the project concludes. The voice of pupils has become stronger with many partners establishing pupil councils. This project has yielded dividends and will leave a lasting legacy for its stakeholders.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 113701,16 Eur

Project Coordinator

St. Michael’s Boys School & Country: IE

Project Partners

• Tieplatzschule
• 1st Primary School of Asvestohori
• Björngårdsskolan
• Agrupamento de Escolas Templários
• ZS sv. Cyrila a Metoda, Bernolakova 18, Kosice
• ESCOLA LES ACACIES