Compulsory education in Portugal goes up to the age of 18 or the 12th grade. Students have to attend school until they reach any of the aforementioned objectives. Even though the rate of those students who drop out of school before that age is very low, the school keeps fighting to keep the students motivated to finish their studies and graduate form secondary school, preparing them to enter university or start working. The school sees this project as a great opportunity to motivate the students to study further and give them wider horizons and different perspectives towards the future and the world of work. By seeing other realities in an international setting, other ways of facing the challenges the future holds in store for them, they will grow in maturity and will gain a stronger capacity to fight against adversity.

Our school has already engaged in many strategies to fight against the will of giving school up. We have a teacher who is held responsible for all the cases in which we see the students start missing many classes and that teacher will have to contact the families of those students and later the authorities responsible to enforce the law, like the police, the social security, the town hall, if the families do not seem capable of solving the problems that have been diagnosed. We also have a teacher who keeps a constant link with the national commission for the protection of children and the youth (CPCJ) and lets them know about any delicate situation a family and /or student is going through that might lead him/her to quitting school.

Our two school psychologists also work on vocational orientation, so the students choose the right path and don’t feel demotivated later. Many times, they are there for the students on an individual basis as well, whenever individual problems affecting the students’ school life are reported.

The school also possesses an office (GPS – Office for the Promotion of Success) where a group of teachers controls indiscipline and coordinates strategies that might foster students’ engagement in learning.

The school involves itself annually in several projects in which the students enrol voluntarily to train/experiment a certain area of knowledge and develop their soft skills. Many of our projects are award-winning ones, both nationally and internationally. In terms of Erasmus projects, our school has been participating on a constant basis for many years, thus having a very vast experience of success with European partnerships.

As of last year, a new national strategy, Curricular Autonomy Domains, has also started, which is a way for the students to do some research that will link several of their subjects at school and then prepare a certain pedagogical product.

Our school is also trying to get involved with EQAVET, which is a European quality assurance framework of reference for vocational training. We want to implement the accompanying of all our students until the third year after they leave our school, so we have some feedback on the success of our strategies.

When our strategies to keep the students motivated don’t work and they give up against the law, we also have the possibility to offer them alternative paths which have a much more hands-on approach. We sometimes have courses for students aged more than 14 who have failed repeatedly to show success at school: CEF – Cursos de Educação e Formação – Courses for Education and Training. For older ones (over 18) who struggle with some subjects at school and can’t finish their secondary studies, we also offer EFA – Education and Training for Adults. Still another possibility is the program Qualifica, which will offer the possibility to any adult to come back to school and validate his/her life and job experience and make it correspond to a certain level of education.

All these services aim to cater for the needs of all our students and foster their well-being in our institution, thus allowing them to be more motivated to carry on studying and choosing a batter career path.

The teachers involved in this project are: Luís Nunes, teacher of English and German, João Teodósio, teacher of Philosophy previously involved in European Erasmus Plus projects. If any of them is to leave the school, there are other teachers willing to be in charge of the project.