Portugal (Coord.)

AGRUPAMENTO DE ESCOLAS DE ARRIFANA, SANTA MARIA DA FEIRA

Country Portugal, Region Norte, City Arrifana

Website http://agrupamentoarrifana.com

Coordinator:  Team:

Organisation (type, scope of work, areas of activity and if applicable, approximate number of paid/unpaid staff, learners)

Agrupamento de Escolas de Arrifana, Santa Maria da Feira (Public School) is a group of schools (15 establishments belonging to 5 parishes of the municipality of Santa Maria da Feira), with students from preschool to the 12th grade, with980 students from 3 to 19 years old. 73 students (7.81%) have Special Needs. We have 106 foreign students of 10 differentetnics and nacionalities, from Roma to Ucranians. 

The Agrupamento works with 90 teachers and 54 are staff. 

Our families have low socioeconomic level (57%) and benefit from financial support by the School Social services. Parents have low qualifications (4th and 6th grade -for mothers, 48.4% and fathers-55.5%) and their incomes are with 10.6% are unemployed.

Most of the families don't give support to their children or recognize the importance of school in their lifes. This group of schools is taking into account different motivations of the students and in order to give more opportunities to students at risk ,since 2007, has extended the vocational program with Vocational Courses (ICT Technician, Commercial, Electrician, Plumber, Beauty Care) and from 2013/2014 the Vocational Courses (Pastry, Craft, Gardening, ICT and Performative Arts). Now we have a vocational course (Youth Technician).

We offer on our curriculum ICT for all students, from 1st grade till 10th grade (National Curriculum). We offer also (school decision) Technologies subject for all students from 7th, 8th and 9th grades as an option of our school (2h every 2 weeks). Students create solar boats, participate on contest of IoT and we have a partnership with a Technological Center of Cork to promote high quality activities and competences in students.

We have European projects since 2009 - Comenius, Leonardo and Erasmus+ and we developed this projects with more than 150 mobilities around Europe and share good practices that we could disseminate after the end of each project. The school since then became more aware of the European citizenship working subjects like culture, water, special needs, history, geography, arts, drama, astronomy, bullying, sustainability and improved our network with school from all europe.

We have Erasmus+ Acreditation School 2020-1-PT01-KA120-SCH-094763 and we are a proactive organization on this field. We host European Voluntary Corps youngsters (Russians, Hungarians, Spanish, French, Italians, English, Turkish, etc) every year with a protocol with an NGO. We apply every year to KA1 (structured courses, job shadowing, invited experts and group students mobility) and until 2023, december we had also KA2 projects. We also host different European groups of teachers and students during the school year for job shadowing activities. We applied to a KA1 Erasmus+ Prize for Good Practices (KA1 2020).

Activities and experience, skills and/or expertise

We are an eTwining School, we are Acreditated by Erasmus KA1 since 2020 and an EQAVET school for vocational courses since 2021. We are also a Health School since 2023.

We promoted on behalf of the project KA1 2022, the participation of 6 teachers on structured courses in Athens “STEM through Robotics”, 4 teachers (History and Department coordinator, English teacher, Special Needs teacher and primar teacher). The course delivered robotics experience from design, project management to implementation, including building from scratch, true programming structure. Participants get experience working with engineering, mathematical and physics concepts such as estimation, and learn to calculate distance, time and speed. 

In Salonica, Greece, we had 2 teachers, a Maths teacher and the Librarian, "Tech Toolbox for Teachers - AI-powered tools",The aim of the course was to investigate and use as many of the innovative, sustainable, effective and efficient digital tools that are available to enable clear and concise curriculum delivery: Classroom platforms, Communication systems, Resource creations through online books, papers, films, photographs and interactive digital documents, Different online tools to generate innovative approaches to arange of curriculum areas, AI-powered tools to create personalized learning experiences for students, Knowledge and skills to integrate AI technology into the classrooms, among other topics.

It was organized on the school the replication of this courses for all the teachers of the school to improve the learning about this topics and to aplly it during lessons. We have a Project called Programação e Robótica (Programing and Robotics) and we develop it at school.

Our school promotes 16h per week to work this topic with students (special needs students also). Our students already participated on the National Contest of Robotics and get the 4th place, on 2022. 

The PADDE (Digital Development Plan) was implemented in our school on 2021 and we promote activities for teachers and students promoting the use of digital contents. Courses are providedd, during the school year, to teacher to improve their knowledge. 

Our Priorities from our school are related to inovation and the quality of learning, on an inclusive way promoting citizenship and colaboration.

The Director of the school has a huge experience on European and Erasmus+ projects (KA1 and KA2) because she is the coordinator from each project submitted as coordinator or partner since 2009 (Comenius). She leads this projects and has a global and innovative perspective and vision on how and where teachers and students should be lead. Her qualifications (master's and post-graduation in School Administration, training in Coaching, Human resources, international courses, among others), positions held (Chair of Pedagogical Council, Vice-President of the Pedagogical Commission of the Terras de Santa Maria Training Center) and a very active and motivating element in the activities of this school, with a high capacity for work and motivation. She is the Director since 2004 at this School. The Director is always searching for opportunities to improve the school and to face chalenges that teachers should face to promote a high quality public education.