IES Josefina Aldecoa (Alcorcón)

IES Josefina Aldecoa is a state-run school of Secondary Education (almost 30 years old) with A levels and Vocational Training related to the field of Administration located in the region of Madrid. The school has just over 1000 students of Secondary Education and about 65 members of staff, with a very low turnover and an experienced school management team. Since 2005 our school belongs to the European Foundation for Quality Management and since 2009 we have the Charter University Erasmus. Some of the features that characterise our school are:

We received in 2018 a KA1 funding to train teachers to implement active methodologies in the hope that it would iniciate a widespread change in the teaching staff. We believe that exchanging innovative teaching practises with other European schools that are characterised for being at the forefront of 21st century teaching could mean taking teaching in our school to the next level. On the one hand, our teachers need to put theory into practise and learn from their experiences as well as the teachers from the schools involved. We consider this project to be in sinergy with two new lines of work that have recently been opened in our school: to work towards the achievement of the UN Sustainable Development Goals by 2030 (as part of the Global Schools Network) and to use a STEM methodological approach. Another characteristic of our school is to promote inclusion, tolerance and understanding at all levels through many different initiatives. As part of our extracurricular activities, we offer educational exchanges with other EU countries secondary schools and participate in the Global Scholars Project along with other schools from all over the world. As many of our secondary education students come from socioeconomic disadvantaged backgrounds, participating in this type of projects is a unique opportunity for many of them to learn those values. As a result, we are participating on a Ka2 project "Arts Journeys in Europe" with a small Special Education School from Greece, to promote Art as inclusion for SEN pupils. It is focused on our Autistic students and their SEN pupils with very difficult background.

The key people in charge of running this K229 project in the school will be the school Secretary, two Head of Studies, the School Counselor and the Head of the Mathematics department, all of them with permanent positions in our school.

Most of the departments have expressed their willingness to be involved in the project, especially the Biology, Technology and English departments.