UP TO SPEED Erasmus Project

Project Title

UP TO SPEED

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 2019

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Key Competences (incl. mathematics and literacy) – basic skills; ICT – new technologies – digital competences; Early School Leaving / combating failure in education

Project Summary

According to the PISA Study, the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment, immigrant students score below non-immigrant students in most PISA-participating countries, both before and after accounting for socio-economic status. So what is the fundamental difference between immigrant students and non-immigrant students if socio-economic status is not responsible? It is that the likeihood increases of immigrant families maintaining a language in the home that is different from the language of school. The maintainance of a different home language to the language of school renders the student at a disadvantage in terms of the acquisition of the language of school, comprehension of teaching and in terms of the feasibility of support with school work.

This issue needs to be addressed as a matter of urgency because it is negatively connected with many disadvantageous outcomes such as decreased capacity to comprehend the education available, increased early school leaving, low literacy levels, decreased employability, an inability to socially intergrate fully and ultimately an increased likelihood of a life of poverty.

The project UP TO SPEED has been designed to address, recognise, assist and monitor the linguistic challenges difficulties faced by immigrant families who maintain a different home language to that of the language of school. It offers an innovative teaching method on how to support students from these households through the gamification language learning to afford them increased sucess at school.

To do so, seven partner institutions, including school authorities, social entities supporting migrants and experts in school education, language learning and ICT based pedagogical technologies from UK, Ireland, Spain, Bulgaria, Turkey and Austria, will work together to design and develop the following products:
– IO1 UP TO SPEED Training Curriculum on how to better support students with a different at home language in a primary school education through innovative pedagogical methods based on digital gamification of language learning.
– IO2 Digital Gamification Tool
– IO3 Digital Assessment Tool
– IO4 Guidelines for Intervention based on Case Studies
– IO5 UP TO SPEED Set of Instructional Videos

The UP TO SPEED digital game will allow teachers to create games which support the acquistion of the language of school, digitally monitor and assess students through a complimentary assessment tool, which provides report based in visual language of the student’s progress. The games will allow students to challenge a family member or carer into engagement with their school work and if the challenge is accepted it can increase their family member/carers level of language acquisition by proxy. Given that all languages are structurally different each partner will design and develop UP TO SPEED’S Guidelines for Intervention on a language by language basis based on Case Studies from real life contexts in the countries represented by the partnership

Target users of the project are primary level teachers, support teachers and school leaders; 70 of them will be directly involved in the project activities. Target beneficiaries are immigrant families who maintain a different home language to that of the language of school; 135 beneficiaries will be directly involved in the project. 496 stakeholders and 1.000 dissemination recipients will be also reached during the development of the project activities.

The project will strengthen the profiles of teaching professionals by supporting their professional development, increase their ability to deal with diversity in the classroom, improve their linguistic awareness, provide them with strategies to manage a multilingual classroom and improve their ICT skills. Through its digital tool output it will facilitate accurate assessment of individual students and class language acquisition progress and track of the level of support and collaboration of student’s families and carers through playful competition.

The expected impact of the project UP TO SPEED on participants, participating organisations, target groups and relevant stakeholders fall under the following categories; pedagogical impact, impact on the target user training practices and employability, impact on the target groups readiness for the labour market, impact on the participation of target groups in education, impact on ICT capabilities and Educational Technological Innovation.

UP TO SPEED will support also schools in tackling early school leaving by increasing the quality of educational opportunities available, enabling the monitoring of language acquisition to ensure that that a lack of comprehension of course materials is reduced or eliminated as a factor in early school leaving in Europe.

Project Website

http://www.up-to-speed.org

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 281989 Eur

Project Coordinator

Aspire Education Group Ltd & Country: UK

Project Partners

• FONDATSIYA OBRAZOVATELNO SATRUDNICHESTVO
• INSTITUTO PARA EL FOMENTO DEL DESARROLLO Y LA FORMACION SL
• SAMSUN İL MİLLİ EĞİTİM MÜDÜRLÜĞÜ
• KIST Consult e.U.
• INNOQUALITY SYSTEMS LIMITED
• Asociación La Bien Pagá Espacio Escénico