School of the future Erasmus Project

Project Title

School of the future

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: ICT – new technologies – digital competences; Quality Improvement Institutions and/or methods (incl. school development); International cooperation, international relations, development cooperation

Project Summary

There is a clear gap between the reality of today’s students and the teaching methods in our European schools. The European schools and their teaching methods have stagnated and are no longer ideal for the youth of today nor do they prepare the necessary skills for the society of tomorrow. Change is needed in order to keep students motivated and for them to see the relevance of education. We need to develop our education to be suited for the society our students are facing, because this is not the case at the moment. Our schools are archaic at worst. We need to estimate what our society will look like in a decade or two and we need to adapt our teaching and learning methods, our range of subjects and subject matter accordingly. We need to have a European scope on this development, as the world is becoming ever more globalised.
SCHOOL OF THE FUTURE is a project between five general secondary schools: Hangö gymnasium in Finland (main coordinator), Istituto Statale Don L. Milani in Italy, Mazeikiu Ventos progimnazija inLithuania, BG & BRG Wien 3 (HIB) in Austria and Agrupamento de Escolas Pedro Eanes Lobato in Portugal.
The idea of the project is to help each other develop our schools. Many school systems are already facing big changes (Portugal, Finland…) but help is needed to make a big enough impact on actual practice.
In this project we want to investigate what the school of the future should look like to be relevant or even ideal. There will be a three-day training course for teachers at the start to set the ground rules and principals for the project and then one student mobility to each participating country. We will compare our present school systems, first in each schools and then in work shops during a mobility, where we compare our school systems and curriculums and create curriculums for the future. Together we will try out creative teaching and learning methods, emphasizing on student-centered learning, using an extended learning environment (e.g. learning outside the classroom, outdoors or in the community), and teaching over subject borders in project format. There will be lectures on ICT and and workshops on future careers, modern language learning, designing a school for the future), The students will get acquainted with different ways of learning and find the methods that suit them, i.e. individualised learning.
We want to use and emphasize practical subjects like music and sport, which have lost status in today’s school, and show how they can be used creatively to help students grow as individuals and as a tool for learning different skills, like cross-cultural communication.
Students will produce posters, flyers, lesson plans, blogs, create music, etc.The whole projects with results will be documented on a public project website, which can be used by other schools for teaching ideas.
As a result we hope that all the participating school will end up with a consistently more modernised and versatile teaching methodology, which in turn will lead to more motivated students (and teachers) which in turn will prevent early school leaving.
Doing this internationally will give a wider perspective, more true to the future and will increase the language skills of the students and make them more culturally aware, which in turn will increase cross-cultural understanding. For teachers it means working towards common educational systems within the EU.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 125983 Eur

Project Coordinator

Hangö gymnasium & Country: FI

Project Partners

• Agrupamento de Escolas Pedro Eanes Lobato
• Mazeikiu Ventos progimnazija
• BG & BRG Wien 3 (HIB)
• ISTITUTO STATALE DON L. MILANI