Country: Portugal
City: Marco de Canaveses
email:
website: www.aescolasmarco.com
Agrupamento de Escolas de Marco de Canaveses (Marco de Canaveses School Cluster) is located in the north of Portugal, in a semi-rural neighbourhood of about 50.000 inhabitants. The School Cluster consists of 10 kindergartens, 14 primary schools and a headschool with primary and lower secondary school for children aged 9-14. Overall the School Cluster has got 2.385 students, 205 teachers and a TEIP team with a Psychologist and a Social Worker that work individually with students struggling with emotional, behavioural, and social challenges. It is also the role of the school social worker and psychologist to work with a student's family to recognize issues that may negatively impact social and academic success.
The school’s social and economic context is of low income and lower family qualifications, reflecting a significant unemployment rate due to the actual economic crisis. Thus, families have lower expectations regarding academic achievements and its benefits for the future of their children. Since no social and economical developments are evident, the school faces a huge challenge in order to modify thoughts and beliefs of most of its students’ families. In order to change this setting, from 2012 the school became a TEIP III public school aiming at improving students' knowledge, skills and abilities, as well as implementing strategies to overcome pupils weak learning behavior, lack of concentration, school failure and early school leaving.
To tackle the issues raised above, the school has implemented specific teaching strategies for Maths, Portuguese and English such as grouping students in small groups according to their abilities and having them leaving their main class to attend these lessons. At the same time, has also organised a team of extra teachers to go in some classes and help the main teacher with pupils showing learning difficulties.
Learning outcomes in Portugal have steadily improved scores across each subject by about a year showing the above measures undertaken by the Ministry of Education have produced some results. In the latest OECD 2016, Portugal has jumped ahed which is a major gain since PISA 2012 assessment came at a time when countries were still grappling with the aftermath of the economic crisis. In order to keep the track of future demands such as equipping more people with better skills to collaborate, compete and connect in ways that drive our economies forward, foster employment and reduce social inequality, our School Cluster forsees the implementation ahead of strategies and resources that will help improve the work done so far, believing the introduction of Content and Language Integrated Learning in the school curriculum will be an asset since long term skills will be reinforced and increased.
Furthermore, the school’s Educational Project aims to develop projects in diversified areas to provide students with key skills for life and ensure a compromise attitude regarding school failure and early school leaving, keeping in mind the 21st Century challenges. The school is involved in eTwinning projects which have been recognized with both National and European Quality Labels, as well as implemented an European Club in order to provide students with meaningful learning experiences, using ICT and developing collaborative work. The school is also involved in some Programmes managed by the Ministry of Education: Coding in the Primary Education and Content Language Integrated Learning at pre-school level. At the same time runs around the school year Maths competitions such as SuperTmatik, The National Reading Plan, Health Education, National Network of Libraries, Eco-schools, Sports Club among others. Last August the School Cluster finished an Erasmus+ KA2 partnership for Financial Education in the primary school – KIDS Keep Invest Donate Spend – recognised with several national awards which are available @ https://twinspace.etwinning.net/3425/home.
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