Four schools of the European community will carry on a 24-months project entitled 'Passport to the Future'. It will begin on September 1st, 2016. The project has been created by four teachers working in high schools from different countries of the European Union: Greece, Hungary, Italy and Poland which have identified common interests and issues and have resolved to address those through cooperation. The project creators live and work in secondary schools in a semi-rural context or towns of secondary economic importance. As a consequence, their students have to cope with a challenging economic situation in which high risk of unemployment, social exclusion, and low household incomes are the norm. Early school leaving, unemployment and immigration belong to global problems, all the partners live and work in areas afflicted by these issues. Young people struggle to find a job and they ever so often decide to drop off out school and university because they cannot find connection between what they learn in a secondary and higher education and the reality of the job market. The real problem for our students is not to succeeded in their studies but to get a job later , when speaking foreign languages and having computer skills is required.The problem is that after graduation, for almost all these people there are no jobs and no guarantee that even the best decisions and hard work will pay off ever. However, education could be the passport to the future that is why we named our project 'Passport to the Future'. As teachers of the school in these disadvantaged areas, we are dealing with a generation that hears that you have to try and do the best, but can we really bring them to more successful future ? To help students to make more conscious decisions on their education and future jobs, we started cooperation with teachers from different countries, in our project we want to show the way and possibly give a passport to the future. The main aims of the projects are to tackle the school drop-out rate both at high school and university levels, to expand the educational offer in order to provide students with real job skills, to promote the study of foreign languages and IT skills needed on the European job market and to help students develop a variety of social skills for the improvement of the global, international and local community.'Passport to the Future' is a collaborative project of 4 different schools from 4 different countries. The project was planned for high school students between 14 and 18 years. In every learning activity, this project will bring 18 students together from participating countries and at least 18 students from the host country. The diversity of profiles aims creating a dynamic learning environment to practice inter-cultural communication. The number of participants is limited in international learning activities but in the national activities much more students will take part. We have planned two kinds of activities national and international ones. International activities both for teachers and students will include seminars about different topics, these seminars will be held by professionals and experts. Furthermore students will work in teams and will take take part in different workshops where they can try their skills and abilities during the short- term exchanges of groups of pupils where every country will organize numerous activities. Some national activities will be done during the project implementation like the logo competition, creating a 'project corner', making videos and interviews or designing posters for dissemination. Besides, it is important to underline the importance of learning and practising the English languages and IT skills so each school should improve the language knowledge of students and the use of technology in teaching methodology. The most important product done by schools in this project will be the Job Guide. This project implemented with teachers, students and professionals will be described and summarized in the Job Guide of the project which we plan to publish in the end of the partnership and make available to teachers from other European schools, local and national authorities. This project will have a good influence not only on the quality of school scheduled work but as well as the creation of a new school image strengthening its role and impact on the local community. We expect that the work will result in significant changes in our students' attitude to the most crucial problems of the European society are undergoing.
This project has involved high school students and staff from 4 small-to-medium sized towns in as many European countries -Greece, Hungary, Italy and Poland- which have identified common interests and issues and have resolved to address those through cooperation. The project creators live and work in secondary schools in a semi-rural context or towns of secondary economic importance. As a consequence, their students have to cope with a challenging economic situation in which high risk of unemployment, social exclusion, and low household incomes are the norm, putting them in a position of clear disadvantage compared to their peers from better-off areas and countries of the European Union. The main aims of the project were: - to tackle the school drop-out rate, that have been observed to be significantly high in the towns involved in the project. All the students that took part in the project have decided to continue to study, one of the Italian students - who went to Poland- has chosen to study in Pleven University (Bulgaria). Others have more clear idea about what to do after finishing the secondary education. Some students became aware of job skills which will be necessary to find a good job, and some who had doubts towards a profession got a positive answer for their choice. - to expand the educational offer in order to provide students with real job skills. The discrepancy between subjects taught and skills that are actually required from students to get into employment is the main reason for students to drop out of education. To make students able to identify and develop the necessary skills and competence to look for or offer a job in an European context constitutes one of the main aims of the project. All the partecipants had the opportunity of improving fluency in English Language and the use of ICT. -to raise the level of awareness of job opportunities available locally among students, and teach them how to look for jobs and approach employments. They visited some factories during the mobilities to see how they work and they talk about job opportunities in those fields with some experts. -to increase students’ social responsibility and participation, and help them develop a variety of social skills for the improvement of the global, international and local community. We had a presentation in Rhodes about the future jobs, we have visited the Technology Centre in Kielce and got information about the future work places, and in Italy there was a conference about “21st century skills, the jobs of the future”. International activities both for teachers and students included seminars about: - Content of the Job Guide - Theory of George Pashalidis. - Studying and working in the EU - 21st century skills, the jobs of the future These seminars will be held by professionals and experts. During the short- term exchanges of groups of pupils the following activities were organized where students worked in teams and took part in different workshops where they could try their skills and abilities: - Presentation of the school through showing the main profiles of the institutions - Visiting some lessons with the aim to reach our project goals - Presentation of an interesting job, this activity took place at a factory or at a company. - Presentation of analysis of social and economical situation - Presentation of the map of vocational education of the countries - Presenting interviews about: "Why students abandon school and university?" - Opinions of people working abroad through interviews and statistics - Editing the Job guide - Presentation of the Job Guide Our main product is the ‘Job Guide’, a guide book for students which can help them to find the right job. We have prepared many things and activities so far to build up the final product of the project. During the two years we work on details step by step to compile this guide book. Students and teachers of different nations worked together, so we could see the similarities and differences of countries’ school system, social and economic area and job market. These small steps lead us to create our final product and we could learn many new methods, new ways of thinking, good examples during the common work. This project helped students to develop skills to put their ideas into practice and take initiative to adapt to rapidly changing and challenging a transnational reality. The cooperation of teachers and students belonging to 4 different European institutions has offered them the opportunity to share and experience useful approaches, techniques and tools.