Partner Schools
Berufskolleg Castrop-Rauxel - Germany
Learnmark - Horsens - Denmark
Rinmangymnasiet - Eskilstuna - Sweden
Lycée Paul Painlevé – Oyonnax – France
Las Flores - Álora - Spain
Addresses Contact Persons and Short Portraits of the Schools
Berufskolleg Castrop-Rauxel
Wartburgstraße 100
44575 Castrop-Rauxel
Germany (DE)
Coordinator: Magdalena Fohrmann
The vocational college "Berufskolleg Castrop-Rauxel" is situated in the city of the same name, which has 76,000 inhabitants and is part of the Ruhr Metropolitan Area. The college has 2,700 students learning in four departments: economics (full time and part time), technology (full time), social education (full time), health (full time and part time).
The vocational college ‘Berufskolleg Castrop-Rauxel’ is part of an area with high changes in economical structure. In former times coal-mining was the main base of economy. Now, after the decline of coal and steel industry, it is changing towards the service sector. Therefore we have a high unemployment rate, because employees are not yet able to cope with the increasing qualification requirements. We also have a high rate of migrants and immigrants. The third point is that there are not enough possibilities for apprenticeship. The structural changes in this region, fusions along with simultaneous cuts of workplaces, the opening of markets, the increasing importance of the information and communication technologies have changed working conditions. Keeping the same job or even the same occupation throughout life is more and more a feature of the past. One of the educational goals of our vocational college in Castrop-Rauxel is to prepare our students as well as possible for their tasks and challenges in the future, which include lifelong learning. The students need entrepreneurial skills in order to compete in today's globalized world. Simply waiting for being told what to do or what to be does not suffice anymore. Our students have to take their lives into their own hands by using entrepreneurial skills in order to have a good start as adult Europeans.
Learnmark Horsens
Stadionsvej 2
8700 Horsens
Denmark (DK)
Coordinator: Lone Ørsted
Learnmark Horsens is a new institution from January 2011, where two former education institutions ( VIA Erhversuddannelser og Business College Horsens merged. We offer vocational education in business and technical areas as well as business and technical gymnasium and adult courses. Horsens is city where many people are employed in industry and because of the crisis the unemployment rate is rising. The local community puts a lot of effort in providing more education to both young people and adults in order to meet the demands in future labourmarket, where a higher education level is need. Learnmark Horsens plays an important role in this and the strategy is to attract more young people and provide education at a hight level. Two of our stategies are to be more international and to focus on innovation and entrepreneurship, so this project will be one of more actions to meet the aims. Learnmark Horsens will take part in all activities and will also design the evaluation tool and plan.
Rinmangymnasiet
Smedjegatan 46
631 86 Eskilstuna
Sweden (SE)
Coordinator: Marie-Louise Malmström
Rinmangymnasiet is one of three upper secondary schools in Eskilstuna. Rinmangymnsiet is located in the centre of Eskilstuna, a town with approx. 90 000 inhabitants. Eskilstuna is located 100 kilometers west of Stockholm, the capital. Eskilstuna is an industrial town which is slowly changing much to do with the university.
Our school, Rinmangymnasiet has approx. 1200 students between the age of 16-19. The school offers both theoretical and vocational programmes (natural science, technical, health and care, hospitality and catering and child and leisure programmes).
Rinmangymnasiet has a good reputation, however we face different kind of problems. One of them is weak students who have difficulties in passing exams. Another problem is the high number of students from different countries and cultures and we face some problems in behvaiour, integration and passing exams among them as well. We also struggle to make the students believe in themselves and to see their own potential in learning.
Our teaching team struggles to develop the students' academic ambition and to motivate the students who have difficulties in different areas. By participating in this Comenius project we hope to increase knowledge and awareness by sharing our issues and experiences with other European countries and to see if we together can find new possibilities and perspectives. We hope to develop our entrepreneurial skills and leadership in the classroom with this project.
Lycée Paul Painlevé
13 Place des deportes de 1944
01100 Oyonnax
France (FR)
Coordinator: Valerie Bagneres
The Lycée Paul Painlevé is located in Oyonnax, a small town of 25000 habitants, isolated from larger cities by the mountains which surround it. Oyonnax and its suburbs are very developed industrially and constitute the first concentration of plastic industry in Europe called the "plastics vallee" This mono-industry which used to be very dynamic attracted a large working class population of diverse origin (i.e. North Africa, Turkey.). However, throughout the last 15 years, a succession of crises and restructuring have made it difficult for the population to adapt itself to the new needs of the industry. The unemployment rate has significantly increased in Oyonnax while it has decreased elsewhere in the region. Enterprises have difficulties recruiting and only keep their most qualified workers. The service industry is poor and does not develop itself well. The Lycée Painlevé was created in 1889 and has been a very famous technical school for plastic manufacturing. Along the 20th century, it has accompanied Oyonnax development, thanks to creative and motivated teacher’s teams. Now we are specialised in general, technical and occupation training courses for applied business and trade. Students at the school are mostly female (70%) and from economically disadvantaged families (61%). Our challenge is huge but our staff is motivated. At the Lycée Paul Painlevé teaching teams struggle to increase the academic level and to give the students more ambition and self-confidence. However, the sociological context is such that our results remain poor compared with others schools which have a more advantaged student population. About 20 years ago, lot of plastic factories were created by innovative employees. The 21st century's Painlevé's mission is to continue accompagning the Plastic Valley's development by teaching in an innovative way. Teachers will give to the students the example and tools for innovation and will help them to become actors of their professional and personal lifes as europeans. It will be very intersting to share our experiences and pedagogical creativity with partners who hosts students from a similar background. The concept of DESIC project (Developing Entrepreneurial Skills and Innovation in and beyond the Classroom), the ideas about innovation with new pedagogical methods are still new in France. Our exchanges with European partners will give our school new and more perspectives and will carry our hope for adapting us to our new challenge.
Instituto de Educación Secundaria "Las Flores"
Avenida de la Constitucion
29500 Álora (Malaga)
Spain (ES)
Coordinator: Jerome Aubrey
Our school is called IES Las Flores (IES stands for Instituto de Enseñanza Secundaria), dependent on the Ministry of Education of the Committee of Andalusia (our regional government). It is a state school, situated in a rural area in the south of Spain, in the town of Álora, a small inland town situated in the Guadalhorce valley 40 km away from Málaga (the capital of the Costa del Sol).
For further information about the area: http://www.costadelsol.net/Web/comarcas/C_ValleGuadalhorceuk.HTM
We are nearly 600 students and 50 teachers; our students are aged between 14 and 19 years in the morning/early afternoon classes and over 18 in the evening classes.
We are at the same time a secondary school with 13 groups, from 1st to 4th year of ESO (Educación Enseñanza Obligatoria, secondary education), a sixth form school with 6 groups (4 for the first year and 2 for the second year) and a secondary adult education institution, as well.
We have special needs education and mixed ability groups and we also have 2 ICT classrooms, and try to use them in the learning process.
We participate as a school in several educational projects sponsored by our regional government such as the bilingual programme to promote the learning of English, sports at schools, School for Peace to promote a non-violence atmosphere at schools and prevent violent situations as bullying, coeducation to promote gender equality,...
We participated in a Grundtvig project about promotion and motivation of lifelong learning in rural areas with adult education institutions from Lithuania, Poland and Finland. (07-ESP01-GR04-00110-2).
At the moment, we are participating in a Leonardo project called "Improving Cooperation between Vocational and Adult Educational Institution, Local Authorities and NGO's to Meet Labour Market Needs" (2010-1-TR1-LEO04-15993)
Las Flores secondary school has contributed to the education of several thousands of the inhabitants of the Guadalhorce Valley.
Throughout the last eight years it has been able, due to the adult secondary education section, to give a second chance for continuous education to adults who have, for some reason or other, had their academic education interrupted.
In this manner it has promoted the reinsertion into labour and/or academic spheres of persons pertaining to disfavoured, marginalized sectors of society.