Esenler Ilce Milli Egitim Mudurlugu – Istanbul Turkey
Partner Coordinator: Burak Gur / Samet Yumak
Esenler District Education Authority includes all the governmental and non-governmental Primary schools and Secondary schools in the district. Furthermore, public training centres, governmental and non-governmental vocational schools and teachers in these education institutions are bound to it. It has 2194 teachers, 80.034 students and 4500 students from vocational high schools.
The District Directorate of National Education (Local Authority of National Education) in Esenler (Istanbul), is a regional governmental organisation which is responsible of all educational activities and administration covering all forms of education; Formal Education (Pre-School, Primary, Lower Secondary, Upper Secondary, Technical/Vocational Schools), Non-Formal Education, Adult Education, Apprenticeship Training and In-Service Training in Istanbul area, under the Ministry of Education. The Department of EU Education and Youth Programs is the one which is in charge of the activities related to EU Projects. Some of the activities of the department are:
-Training to teachers and vice/principals to prepare and run EU Projects.
-Organise various types of projects within EU Education and Youth Projects.
-Establish partnerships for EU Projects.
-Follow the news and developments of EU Education and Youth Projects.
The target group of the organisation covers all teachers and students who are willing to organise and be involved in any type of EU projects, including Youth in Action Programs. Our responsibility is to give the technical aid and facilities for their project studies and partnerships. Additionally, another part of our tasks is making partnerships and developing EU projects with institutions, such as Universities, Guiding and Counselling Centres and Adult Education Centres located within the region, as our local partners. Therefore, in matter of Youth Programs, the target group is very wide, from general and Upper Secondary Schools to Technical/Vocational teachers, students and adult students.
I.T. Giordani-Striano – Naples, Italy
Partner Coordinator: Rosaria Nocerino
Our organisation is a technical secondary school which, in spite of being situated in a good residential area of the city , for the educational curricula it offers (our pupils after 5 years can get a : Mechanical ,Electrotechnical, Chemical, or ICT TECHNICIAN diploma), our institute gathers pupils coming from the most disadvantaged Neapolitan suburbs that are populated by families in which their breadwinners are often unemployed or work by the piece.
Our pupils’ age ranges from 14 to 19, among them there are students with special needs ,as it’s in this kind of vocational specializing schools that these, not too lucky pupils ,apply to. It cannot be denied that the majority of our students are not motivated to school in general, as the know that after their studies it will be very hard to find a job with their Technical Diploma. We try to explain them that if they succeed in acquiring the skills and competences that such diplomas generally provide them ,they will have more chances in acquiring a place in the current difficult wold of work..
As a matter of fact, we as educators are strongly aware that year by year it is becoming easier for our pupils to believe in the fairy tale of Little Red Cap than in the fact that by studying they will find a good job. However if ,on one hand we can’t blame them since they live in an area with the highest youth unemployed rate (it is nearly the 50%); on the other hand we want ,more and more to provide our pupils with the right tools and instruments able to make them able to come out from their disadvantaged conditions as we are conscious that one organisation represent the only one point of reference that our weak pupils have .
Structurally our school is very big so, quite recently, we have been joined to another school as this other one has been loosing pupils since years and now our organization welcomes in the whole 1500 pupils and about 150 teachers. Indeed, up to two years ago the name of our school was ITI GIORDANI after the fusion of both organizations it is named ITI GIORDANI-STRIANO.
Indeed, we think that we have been given the possibility to enrich our Educational offer by providing our pupils with more chances of studies as now we have added two more courses, Mechanics and Electrotechnics.
Institutionally, our schooling format consists of two basic terms/years during which our pupils study basic subjects consisting in :
Italian,Mathematics,English,History,Science,Chemistry,Physics,Technology and Religion; at the end of these two years students have to choose the specialization course they will continue their studies, in other words they will have to decide if to join the : ICT and communications, Mechanics, Electrotecnics and Chemistry.
As a matter of fact the category of students attending our school besides coming from not well-to-do families includes a lot of students with special needs ,affected by high level of disability (autism, down syndrome, mental retard) and many students pertained to the BES categories who include dyslexics ,dysgraphics and slower to learn.
It’s for these reasons that we have been activating any sort of strategies in order to:
– make our students attend regular classes
-receive the right suppors to learn,
-to make them feel active participants in all aspects of the school life.
In other words we have been developing and designing our schools, classrooms, programs and activities so these students can learn and participate together with the other pupils.
All the care and the professionalism our organisation with its high qualified staff has been appointed INCLUSION LOCAL EDUCATIONAL CENTRE in 2012 by our Regional Educational Board, this means that we are referent -tutor of all the other schools in the district our school is located and since 2015 we have been in charged of being AUTISM HELPDESK .
Inspectoral Scolar Judetean Bacau – Bacau Romania
Partner Coordinator: Ana-Maria Rotaru
The School Inspectorate of Bacau County, Romania is a public body, under the authority of the Romanian Ministry of Education. Our main task is to coordinate, monitor and control the schools of all levels in the county of Bacau (about 300 public educational units: kindergartens, primary schools, gymnasiums and trades schools and 20 private education units). The schools educating minority students have an important place in the strategic plan, as inclusion is not only a local strategy, but also of European importance. The inspectorate is structured in departments: management, curriculum and other departments (judicial, accounting, study documents, registry, investment). All our 27 school inspectors are experienced teachers and many have also worked as school principals or deputy principals. Many have experience in curriculum design and the implementation of assessment practices, in school management and in educational research. Our institution also coordinates and monitors the activity of the Teaching Staff House which offers free courses for all teachers in our county, as well as Children’s Palace, institution which primarily focusses in extracurricular activities, where Roma students develop and exercise their talents and abilities, under direct coordination of teacher-trainers with expertise.
Our Inspectorate (Inspectoratul Scolar Judetean Bacau) also provides an assurance of quality and public accountability in the education system in our county. We offer equal opportunities to schools belonging to different backgrounds and try to include as much as possible minority students from local educational institutions. Through the inspections in schools and centres for education we carry out, we promote best practices and school improvement by advising teachers, principals and boards of management in the school units in our area. We are also in charge of providing reports on curriculum provision, teaching, learning and assessment in the educational system and we provide advice to policy makers in the Department of Education and to the wider educational system. We have effective partnerships with the school units in our region, authorities and institutions responsible for education and we have established effective local, regional, national and international partnerships so far.
We have had previous LLP, Erasmus+ cooperation and we consider these actions a real way of changing something in the educational process by exchanging ideas and practices with other institutions in the respect of adapting some features to our own system in the immediate interest of our staff and students. The local projects and training activities focusing on developing teacher’s competences, such as “School without Discrimination”, “A Second Chance” and “Roma’s Origin: theory, legend, fact” are just some examples of how the Inspectorate meets the needs of the target groups.
Volkshochschule Arberland – Regen
Partner Coordinator: Lieselotte Jocham
Volkshochschule ARBERLAND (formerly known as Volkshochschule für den Landkreis Regen (Vhs)) is a centre of adult and youth education. Volkshochschule ARBERLAND provides courses for the general public in the fields of culture, vocational training, languages and health. Our institution provides a wide range of offers for disadvantaged people to help them stay in or reintegrate into the society.
Target groups are migrants, refugees and asylum seekers, people coming from the regular school without certification, older people and unemployed people. Special trainings in the field of intercultural competences is one of the most important topics. Vhs offers also courses for immigrants and other social disadvantaged people.
We are educating and training disadvantaged young people at the age of 15 – 20 in pre-vocational training courses. These are young people who have left school with a lot of disadvantages and they haven’t been successful in finding a job because of this. We instruct and educate them and we organize practical trainings in different companies and various jobs. We teach them soft skills, modern technologies and social media competences. We also train adults, mainly unemployed people, in these fields. Here we teach groups of students to prepare them for specific professions such as nursing professions, sales workers, office vocations or trade and craft professions. We are educating and training disadvantaged young people at the age of 15 – 20 in pre-vocational training courses. These are young people who have left school with a lot of disadvantages and they haven’t been successful in finding a job because of this. We instruct and educate them and we organize practical trainings in different companies and various jobs. We teach them soft skills, modern technologies and social media competences. We also train adults, mainly unemployed people, in these fields. Here we teach groups of students to prepare them for specific professions such as nursing professions, sales workers, office vocations or trade and craft professions.