According to the Lithuanian Statistics department, in 2014 38,8 thousands of Lithuanians emigrated .The biggest number of emigrants was to Great Britain ,the biggest number of re- emigrating people also comes from Great Britain. Due to these facts there is a clear evidence of the need to analyze British and Lithuanian educational systems and help children who are forced to change schools and therefore they find difficulties in adjusting. Today as we are all in EU with no borders and migration is part of our daily lives, we are starting to face new problems. Having spent 3-5 years learning at schools abroad Lithuanian children experience difficulties adapting back to their native school system. The school has to help them to cope with these problems, which are more complex by not knowing the background of their previous education. The same problems are in UK, Westbourn Academy also wants to study cultural, educational differences as to help their students. Besides, it is the first time they got interested in Erasmus+ possibilities and as we are experienced, we will coordinate the project and help them. Sharing the experience they have working with emigrants, will help us to find the ways how to help such students. Now the main attention is paid only to academic problems (adapted programs for Lithuanian language) but the students are facing problems occurring from different teaching/learning environment as well as personal adaptation ones. Trying to solve these issues, we and our UK partners are going to share British and Lithuanian schools best practices studying, analyzing and discussing educational systems, comparing the teaching/learning environments and curriculum, sharing teaching methods as well as the approach to emigrants‘ needs from Eastern Europe in the UK and re-emigrants' from UK in Lithuania. For 2 years we have planned 3 transnational mobilities (5 teachers), 2 Learning activities (team of 6 teachers from each country) and 1 multiplier event -conference"Schools without boarders"After the first year of the project the main differences and similiarities in educational system process, environment etc. ,will be outlined in the project diary (eTwinning).The material will be discussed by pshycologists, special needs educators, social worker and teachers involved in the project and basic remarks ( discussions,presentations showed to parents and target audience )done on what to focus preparing the methodological recommendations. The final products -IO1and IO2 - will be prepared and they will bring longer term benefits to other schools (seminars will be planned and organized), because we are sure that there will be more and more re-emigrant students in Lithuania. Cross-border cooperation and the 'peer' learning method will not only help the school staff to strengthen their professional skills, but also allow teachers to increase their multicultural understanding, education without borders and that will influence educational process in a positive way. In these handbooks the cultural, social and educational differences will be outlined and advice how to increase educational staff motivation to help migrant students will be provided. The joint team (teachers, psychologists, social workers, school leaders, special child's needs educators,etc.) from Westbourne Academy and Karmelava Balys Buracas gymnasium will participate in preparing the recommendations for school staff on how to create and maintain learning environments that support target students, how to develop and adapt different teaching strategies and skills to meet the needs of the migrant students. A handbooks for teachers with recommendations "How to increase educational success working with emigrant students inUK"and "Methodical recommendations for teachers working with re-emigrant students in Lithuania " will be published. In these handbooks the cultural, social and educational differences will be outlined and advice how to increase educational staff motivation to help migrant students will be provided. The final conference “Schools without borders" will be organized together with Kaunas region Educational centre for teachers who have re-emigrant students at their school. In the conference the final project products will be presented.
When we started the Project, according to the Lithuanian Statistics department, in 2016 there were more than 50.000 people who emigrated. The statistics say that 14.200 people came back to Lithuania. Due to the fact there is a clear evidence that (re)emigration creates problems for children changing the educational systems. The project "Schools Without borders" helped us to look deeper into the problem, make some researches, compare British and Lithuanian educational systems and help children who are forced to change schools. Having spent 3-5 years learning at schools abroad, Lithuanian children experience difficulties adapting back to their native school system. The school has to help them to cope with these problems, which are more complex by not knowing the background of their previous education. The same problems are in UK. Westbourne Academy also wanted to study cultural, educational differences as to help their students. It was the first Erasmus+ project for Westbourne Academy so that is why we coordinated the project and encouraged them. There were 40 Lithuanian students studying and with the help of meetings, discussions, surveys we found out about their feelings, difficulties they had while adapting to a different educational system. Sharing the partners' experience in working with emigrants, shadowing them helped us to find the ways how to help such students. The main attention was paid not only to academic problems (adapted programs for Lithuanian language) in our school but the project helped us to find ways how to help students face problems occurring from different teaching/learning environment as well as personal adaptation ones. Sharing British and Lithuanian schools best practices, studying, analyzing and discussing educational systems, comparing the teaching/learning environments and curriculum, sharing teaching methods as well as the approach to emigrants’ needs from Eastern Europe in the UK and re-emigrants' from UK in Lithuania helped a lot and the result of the project is seen in "Methodical recommendations for teachers working with (re)emigrants".During the 2 years we had 3 transnational mobilities (5 teachers), 2 Learning activities (team of 6 teachers from each country) and 1 multiplier event – conference "Schools without borders". After the first year of the project the main differences and similarities in educational system process, environment etc. were outlined and the frames for the final project product set up. Psychologists, special needs educators, social worker and teachers were involved.The final products - IO1and IO2 - were prepared and they definitely will bring longer term benefits to other schools (seminars are already planned) and participating in the seminar "Better integration of refugees and migrants in the Nordic-Baltic region" in Finland, Helsinki in October, 2017 will ensure the sustainability of the results. Cross-border cooperation and the 'peer' learning method not only helped the school staff to strengthen their professional skills, but also allowed teachers to increase their multicultural understanding, education without borders and that already had influenced educational process in a positive way. The cultural, social and educational differences were outlined and the recommendations how to increase educational staff motivation to help migrant students were provided. The joint team (teachers, psychologists, social workers, school leaders, special child's needs educators, etc.) from Westbourne Academy and Karmelava Balys Buracas gymnasium worked together in preparing the recommendations for school staff on how to create and maintain learning environment that support target students, how to develop and adapt different teaching strategies and skills to meet the needs of the migrant students. A handbook for teachers "Methodical recommendations for teachers working with (re)emigrant students" was published. In this handbook the cultural, social and educational differences were outlined and advice how to increase educational staff motivation to help migrant students was provided. The final conference “Schools without borders" was organised, the best experience shared and the final project products presented.