Agrupamento de Escolas de Arrifana, Santa Maria da Feira (Public School) is a group of schools (15 establishments belonging to 5 parishes of the municipality of Santa Maria da Feira), with students from preschool to the 12th grade, with 960 students from 3 to 19 years old. 73 students (7.81%) have Special Needs. We have 106 foreign students of 10 different ethnics and nationalities, from Roma to Ukrainians. The Agrupamento works with 90 teachers and 54 are staff. Our families have low socioeconomic level (57%) and benefit from financial support by the School Social services. Parents have low qualifications (4th and 6th  grade -for mothers, 48.4% and fathers-55.5%) and their incomes are with 10.6% are unemployed. Most of the families don't give support to their children or recognize the importance of school in their lifes. This group of schools is taking into account different motivations of the students and in order to give more opportunities to students at risk ,since 2007, has extended the vocational program with Vocational Courses (ICT Technician, Commercial, Electrician, Plumber, Beauty Care) and from 2013/2014 the Vocational Courses (Pastry, Craft, Gardening, ICT and Performative Arts). Now we have a vocational course (Youth technician).

The Portuguese National Strategy for Citizenship Education and Human Rights is developed in our school in different grades. Gender Equality, Interculturality, Sustainable Development, Environmental Education, Health, Sexuality, Media, Institutions and Democratic Participation, Financial Literacy and Consumer Education, Road Safety, Entrepreneurship, World of Work, Risk, Security, Defense and Peace, Animal Welfare and Volunteering are the topics that portuguese students should be aware in every school.

We are an UBUNTU school were Mandela pilars help students to engage at school. Our Social Mediator and Psichologist work with a project to improve family relations with schools.

We are an eTwining School, we are Acreditated by Erasmus KA1 since 2020 and an EQAVET school for vocational courses since 2021. We are also a Health School since 2023.

We have European projects since 2009 - Comenius, Leonardo and Erasmus+ and we developed this projects with more than 150 mobilities around Europe and share good practices that we could disseminate after the end of each project. The school since then became more aware of the European citizenship working subjects like culture, water, special needs, history, geography, arts, drama, astronomy, bullying, sustainability and improved our network with schools from all europe. We have Erasmus+ Accreditation School 2020-1-PT01-KA120-SCH-094763 and we are proactive organization on this field. We host European Voluntary Corps youngsters (Russians, Hungarian, Spanish, French, Italians, English, Turkish, etc) every year with a protocol with an NGO. We apply every year to KA1 (structured courses, job shadowing, invited experts and group students mobility) and until 2023, december we had also KA2 projects. We also host different European groups of teachers and students during the school year. We applied to a KA1 Erasmus+ Prize, for Good Practices (KA1 2020).

Our students and teachers have a good relation with Erasmus+ but they need to be more aware, of UE topics to promote democracy, EU history, how the EU works, cultural diversity among others.

EU institutions and theirs competences are not know by most of our students despite of the contact with European students and teachers. European Parliament or European Commission are very far for a simple family in Portugal, mostly to those who have low qualifications and low opportunities.