Kogeka 8

KOGEKA 8 Sint Maria Geel is a technical and vocational secondary school, located in the heart of

the Belgian town Geel (Province of Antwerp).

The administrative name of our school is KOGEKA 8. KOGEKA is the name of the school group to which Sint Maria Geel belongs. In 2001, all the Catholic secondary schools in Geel and in our neighbouring town Kasterlee, decided to merge into one larger school group. Combined, these schools offer a wide variety in fields of study to about 4,500 pupils in total. The school group employs approximately 700 teachers. At our school, we are happy to welcome 550 pupils each day. We offer a number of disciplines in two large fields of study: business management and IT, and social care. Our study options vary from, for example, Business Support, Marketing and Entrepreneurship, Accountancy, IT and networks, Office Management and Communication, Retail and Visual Merchandising to Organizational Support, Social and Technical Sciences, Youth & Elderly Care and Care for the Disabled. Our school employs approx. 80 teachers.

We have a long history of student exchanges and attending international summits at schools in Poland, Spain, Portugal and Germany (e.g. Comenius).

For over 15 years our school has sent Business students on vocational trainings to a wide variety of companies and institutions in Prague, Lille, London, Zadar and Aruba (Leonardo da vinci). Since the European Commission launched its programme Erasmus +, our school has been very fortunate to be part of three Key Action 2 Strategic Partnerships (two on migration and diversity and another one on Peer Education and Learning Strategies), as well as six KA 116 projects and has been awarded a VET-Charter. In our school group KOGEKA we have an international team that consists of delegates from each school. Kogeka 8 Sint Maria delegates a team of three coordinators, Mr. Hans Geerts, Ms. Ann Van den Meutter and Ms. Yoo Ree Elsemans, who manage all European projects (KA 1 and 2). This team is very experienced in writing applications and the organisation of project meetings (hosting groups of partner schools), pupil exchanges, internships and staff mobility. Internationalisation is an important part of our students' education. We feel it is vital to broaden their horizons, praticing language and IT skills and creating awareness on being part of a European community and sharing democratic values.

For this new KA 229 School partnership we will gather a team of highly motivated teachers, who are willing to participate in the school exchanges, the preparation and implementation of the project's learning activities. We are aiming for at least 10 teachers in order to divide the work load and to guarantee a wide support among the staff. The project will be coordinated by the contact person, Ms. Yoo Ree Elsemans (back-up is foreseen).

We are convinced that this project will highly benefit the participating students and teachers as well as the rest of the school.