General description of the organisation:
“Agrupamento de Escolas de Cristelo” is a state school, in Paredes (AEC), is a cluster of 3 schools, divided into two schools with preschool (ages 3-5) and primary education (ages 6 - 9), and one school of, lower and upper, secondary education, (ages 10 - 18).
We have around 1000 students and 100 teachers. The schools are in a rural area but close to the second most important Portuguese city in Portugal, Porto. Paredes is a region famous for the design and manufacture of furniture. AEC receives students with serious risk of school failure and the main reason for this is the economic and social crisis that has arisen in the region, some year now. Due to that, the school implements social programmes and curricula diversification oriented to this type of student. There are also some specific courses for students with problems related to physical, psychological, and mental disabilities.
Most of the students are from families with a low income and, where illiteracy and poverty coexist. This context has led the school to create a “TEIP”- It's an Educational Field of Priority Intervention, according to an educational contract that has made possible to achieve the objectives and aims of AEC to improve student outcomes. As a public education institution, it defends a strong relationship with the community, always seeking to involve teachers as active agents in the configuration of the curricula. Our Participation in European projects allow the students to experience a different school and make them feel, they are a part of the European community. One of our goals is giving them different contexts where they can learn and use the English language, we consider this very important because many of our students have great difficulties in learning this language. Therefore, they’ll have meaningful experiences due to the project that otherwise, wouldn’t be possible.
The school has extensive experience from participating in Erasmus+, KA1 and KA2 projects since 2014.