Both partners provide vocational training for young people with special needs, enabling them to lead an independent life and find an appropriate and satisfying job. In everyday school life, pupils in both institutions are currently experiencing school life as passive consumers. Participation in the relevant bodies is low. The school is the place where others take responsibility for me. That has to change. The aim of the project is to involve pupils more intensively than before in school life or to integrate themselves. The aim is to create the feeling of perceiving oneself as an elementary part of the school. The pupils should perceive the school as "their" school. In bi-national working groups ideas are generated and implemented on how student participation can be increased and lived. In concrete terms, a concept for school-conferences will be developed, as well as a concept of social-emotional competences for self-representation, in order to ensure the assertion of one's own interests and the representation of one's own needs in relation to others (here: teachers and school management). In both schools about 4 teachers will participate in the project, who will moderate the process. There are about 10 students per school working on the topic in binational working groups, but the working group can easily be expanded if there is more interest. The students on both sides are in recognised vocational training, mainly in industrial fields. No one should be excluded from the process. At the end of the project, the partner schools should be schools with more student commitment and more co-responsibility. Students will be encouraged to become more independent and active. Problems in everyday school life are problems that concern everyone and which must therefore be solved by everyone. Both schools will end up being more democratic and active than before. The results from the area of the promotion of social-emotional intelligence will be further disseminated through close cooperation with the Anna Wolf Institute Heidelberg (www.anna-wolf-institut.de) and will be incorporated into the work of the Institute. The concept of the student conference and the experiences with it will also be published on the Internet and on the homepages of the schools and are thus available to all interested parties.
At both partners, young people with increased support needs are provided with vocational training that should enable the pupils to lead an independent life and find an appropriate, satisfying job. In everyday school life, the pupils in both institutions currently experience school life in a passive-consuming way. Participation in the relevant committees is low. School is the place where others take responsibility for me. We wanted to change that. The aim of the project was for pupils to be more intensively involved in school life than before, or to want to be involved themselves. The aim was to create a feeling that they are a fundamental part of the school. The pupils should feel that the school is "their" school. In binational working groups, ideas were to be generated and implemented on how pupil participation can be increased and lived. In concrete terms, the plan was to develop a concept for student conferences, as well as a concept for social-emotional competences for self-representation in order to ensure that students can assert their own interests and present their own needs to others (here: teachers and school management). About 4 teachers participated in the project in both schools, who moderated the process. On the pupils' side, about 10 pupils from each school were involved, working on the topic in binational working groups. The pupils on both sides are in recognised vocational training, mainly in industrial fields. No one was to be excluded from the process. At the end of the project, the partner schools should be schools with more student engagement and with more co-responsibility. Students should be encouraged to be more independent and active. We deviated from the planned pupil conferences right at the beginning of the project because both partners considered the introduction of a pupil court to be more sensible, but the objective of the project to increase pupil participation was not changed by this. The idea fell on fertile ground in both schools, because the interest of both pupils and teachers was great. The class teachers, among others, were also involved in the selection of the pupils to participate. For both partners, about 5 teachers were intensively involved in the project, plus several colleagues who contributed, e.g. specialist knowledge. Approximately 10 pupils were involved at both institutions. There were a total of 5 meetings during which intensive work was done on the further development of pupil courts. Leaflets were prepared, criminal records were drafted, including the sentences to be imposed, and court proceedings were acted out in role plays, with everyone playing the role of judge, public prosecutor and also lawyer. Visits to prisons and local courts provided a link to reality. For almost all students, it was their first contact with the judicial system in their country. The project therefore also helped to promote civic awareness. At the end of the project, another visit of the Hungarian partners to Germany was planned and the last activity was a visit to the European Parliament in Strasbourg to strengthen a common European awareness. These two activities had already been planned and booked by the students. Due to the Corona pandemic, both events were cancelled and did not take place. All our hopes rested on a 6-month extension of the project, but since the epidemiological situation had not improved, we decided to end the project, although the proper conclusion is still missing. Finally, in both countries, we decided not to introduce the student court because we had reached the cognitive limits of our participants. With the participating pupils, we have definitely achieved one of the project's goals, namely to increase pupil participation in school life. Especially after the first exchanges, the participants have taken responsibility for themselves and have driven the project forward with great commitment and, to a large extent, on their own responsibility. A whole range of colleagues have also been committed to the project and have contributed to it. We have thus achieved a certain internationalisation of our schools. In the meantime, we have started a new project with an additional partner, which emphasises the practical side, the side that clearly suits our students better. We hope that we will be able to attract other groups of students and win them over to our project.