IISS Charles Darwin

The name of the school is Istituto Statale Istruzione Superiore "Charles Darwin" (www.isisdarwin.edu.it). In our Institute there are essentially two categories of upper secondary school: a Liceo (similar to a British grammar school) which provides a more academic training and an Istituto Tecnico, where more practical and technical disciplines are taught. Pitagora is the name of the liceo (science school - Liceo Scientifico Pitagora) and Marco Polo is an upper secondary technical school for tourism (Istituto Tecnico per il Turismo Marco Polo). Darwin school belongs to the second cycle of education and its overall length of studies is five years (from the first to the fifth grade), ending with the achievement of "Diploma". There are about 1000 pupils of whom 800 are attending courses anti meridian distributed in 40 classes and 200 workers pupils who attend evening classes distributed into 7 classes. Students age ranges between 14 and 19. Our institute background is a melting pot and it has a high percentage of migrant students from social-economic and political deprived areas. There is a great number of foreign students, mostly from South America, but also from Romania, Philippines and China. It is multicultural and its population is socio-economically varied.

Some of the students that attend the school belong to the social and economically disadvantaged areas from which many of them come from, mainly the south-west suburban areas of Rome Furthermore, they are not very active students. Tutorials are very important at the school because students families can’t always take care of their kids as they should and don’t control if

they study or do the homework. In such a context the participation into the learning process and in the school life are often at stake. We are witnessing an increasing lack of confidence in a possible school achievement and a urging necessity to be as soon as possible economically self-sufficient. Such complex surroundings and multicultural contexts may undermine students’

self-confidence and determine, as a result, early school dropouts. Became involved in the project it will enhance their motivation to participate in various activities and will expand their European outlook. Therefore our starting point idea for a project is to provide a variety of activities to contribute to discover new ways, methodologies from the participant schools that can make our task easier and help us get better results Our students are involved in various educational activities, like tutorial classes with peers, school psychologists, teachers,

headmasters and other stakeholders involved in the educational process. Many of these activities were on increasing the awareness on fighting against gender diseguality and violence on women.