Sustainable schools and environment Erasmus Project

Project Title

Sustainable schools and environment

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: Civic engagement / responsible citizenship; Intercultural/intergenerational education and (lifelong)learning; Environment and climate change

Project Summary

Driestar College is a secondary school which offers almost all streams of education and they also offer education for students with special needs. In the havo and vwo stream Driestar College offers bilingual education. Students that join the bilingual stream also take part in an international collobaritive project which takes place in the third year. All of the bilingual students will do the project during an exchange programme.
Baár-Madas Reformed High School is a more than 100 years old institution in the heart of Buda. Besides following the traditional religious values, our school is quite modern in many ways. We teach our students the importance of environment protection (it is a ‘green’ school).
Via the coordinator internationalisation of our school we came in contact with Baár-Madas and we both agreed on having a student exchange programme. We think it is important for students to be open minded and broaden their horizon. Students get to know a foreign culture, family, traditions and learn about differents topics like safety, sustainability, migration from different perspectives. To realise these goals are students will join an exchange programme. We agreed to do a project about sustainabilty. Baár-Madas is a “green school” and Driestar College has a partnership with other reformed schools to improve sustainabilty in our schools. Driestar College has a sustainability committee.
Besides the general goals like broaden your horizon. Get to know a foreign culture, schoolsysteem etc, we aim to deepen the exchange to work collaboratively on the project sustainability. Our aim is that students are aware of their ecological footprint. Students should know what could improve on a local, national and international level. Students will have to hand in and present their action plan. In the action plan students will do recommendations to improve sustainability in our schools and/or local environment.
Students that will join the exchange and project are students in year three of havo bilingual education and the whole class will join the project. There are about 27 students in this class. Students of Baár-Madas will have to apply to join the project and there will be about 25 students that will join the programme. All students are in the age of 14 or 15 and students of Baár-Madas are in the gymnasium stream.
The project will start online. Students will work together and will use a shared booklet. Students will get a basic knowledge about the theme. Students will look at differences and simmilarities between the countries and how people deal with sustainability.
The project will start online. We will match the students and they will work collaboratively on an assignment. Students will gain a basic understanding of the topic. They will look at the simmilarities and differences between both countries regarding sustainability. In Hungary we will focus on sustainble cities and how cities could be the key to a sustainable society. Different field trips will be organised to put the theory into practice. Students get the explaining about their end product (action plan). In the Netherlands there will be different activities (keynote speaker, field trips) to deepen the understanding of the topic. There will be a focus on the concequences of the current policy regarding sustainability. Students will write the final end pruduct together. The action plan consists of ecommendations schools and families could carry out to improve sustainability. The best plans will be presented in the “green” committees of the schools and hopefully the schools and families are able to implement these ideas. Action plans will be stored in the portfolios of our students and assessed by teachers.
With this project we would like to be an example for others. We would like to expand the project with more partnerschools and we hope that other exchange groups in our school will set up projects to deepen the exchanges. We will share the results of the projects among other schools during meetings and via local newspapers and schoolmagazines we like to generate publicity for the project.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 50600 Eur

Project Coordinator

Stichting Christelijk voortgezet Onderwijs op Reformatorische Grondslag de Driestar & Country: NL

Project Partners

• Baár-Madas Református Gimnázium, Általános Iskola és Kollégium