Institut Laia l'Arquera

The IES Laia l'Arquera is a public Secondary School located at the outskirts of Mataró, Maresme. Mataró was born around 80 CE, when the Roman city of Iluro was founded.  It was built on a small raised part of the coastal plain, where the city’s old town is now located. Iluro became one of the most important cities of Roman Catalonia, until the third century, when the Roman Empire began to decline and practically abandoned the area.

Centuries later, Mataró became a small medieval town, made up of farmers under the rule of the feudal landlords until it was brought under the authority of Barcelona by the late Middle Ages.

During the Industrial Revolution, local businessmen contributed to the expansion of the city, with its most iconic achievement being the first railway line in the Iberian Peninsula aside with the development of the textile industry, which attracted new residents to the city, who came from all over to work there. This phenomenon meant new neighbourhoods were built for the workers, transforming the face of the city.

 The neighbourhood where our school is located is called Pla d'en Boet and was created in the 60's and 70's to take workers from Andalucia and Extremadura, nowadays there is a big diversity. A high percentage of people from Morocco, Africa, South America and China live there. Originally, the students’ profile was that from the neighbourhood, that is to say, students coming from a disadvantageous socio-cultural environment. However, four years ago, the school made a big change, not only with the name (It was called Institut Pla d'en Boet), but with a lot of new projects, in order to be more attractive to all inhabitants of the city. This change has led to satisfactory results as students from other neighbourhoods are coming to the school.

Our projects range from the introduction of English on a cross-curricular basis in the subjects of science, technology and visual arts to the use of tablets from 1st to 4th year of secondary education (students aged from 12-15). As regards post-obligatory education, the school provides knowledge in the areas of science, technology, social and humanities in order to prepare them for university.

Our main motivation to join the project is to foster the international projection of our school and students. As we mentioned before, we are located in a disadvantageous socio-cultural (we are grade C by the Catalan Board of Education, as a center with special difficulties) and this is the first opportunity for many of our students to acquire new skills such as cultural awareness, civic and ICT skills, to learn about social inclusion and to speak English with people from other nationalities that do a project together and it is the first chance for many students to experience how people from another country live as they will travel abroad to the partner schools' countries . We consider it as a key element in their learning process. We have participated in cultural exchanges for the last 3 years but some of our students cannot travel due to economical reasons.