Our school is in an urban area but 80% of our students travel for an hour to come to school because they come from a rather modest background and are looking for a school that will offer them opportunities for employment and international openness. The place of exchanges and mobility is important in our school. Our school project is to help young people grow up and lead them to be responsible European citizens. We created a European English section in 2004 for the Vocational Baccalaureate in Admin (which became Management-Administration in 2013) to allow our young people to rediscover a taste for studying and practicing English, which is an essential language but also to offer them a dynamic European cultural openness. We have extended our offer to Spain and since 2017 we have been offering mobility in Oliva to students of vocational baccalaureate Management Administration or Sales because the development of a second language is important. The aim is to make participants mobile and active in society, to improve their sense of initiative and to give them more job opportunities in France or abroad. Developing the European dimension of our establishment is a major element of the establishment project. In fact, we opened an international section in English for the Vocational Baccalaureate in Business Sales at the start of the 2021 school year to offer them the chance to do an internship in Ireland. Our students often continue in BTEC in our UFA Saint Thomas. Admin BTEC students also do a 4-week internship abroad (around 20 students per year). Thus, developing partnerships and privileged links with European companies is essential. Our project is part of an international program for lifelong learning and supports European policies in the field of education and training. The results we expect are well beyond the life of the project and will be transferable to new areas, will be extended at the end of the funded period, will influence future practices in our establishment and will shine on our community. Improving the mobility of our young people is a challenge. The positive impact on the school is being felt because we have more and more candidates for the European section and we now have 16/18 pupils per level. We attract other young people with the mobility offered in Spain. Our goal is that 80% of students who have completed an internship abroad continue their studies in Bac + 2 or +3 or +5 and be mobile abroad. Any young person who will have this international openness will multiply his chances of being hired and will become an ambassador for peace and tolerance in the world.
Our school is a private and Catholic school which is over 350 years old and was founded by Father Ange le Proust who invited a group of nurse-sisters to join him in his hospital in Lamballe (Brittany). In 1661 the Saint Thomas de Villeneuve Congregation was created. The sisters opened a boarding school for English girls. We now have a nursery and a primary unit as well as a vocational, technical and A'Level school. We also teach post-graduate students. Teachers are dedicated and help their pupils the best they can in their work and in their personal achievement. Our pupils are not highly motivated because they do not usually choose to study in a vocational course. Our aim and our duty are to help them find motivation and self-esteem while offering them interactive and challenging projects and lessons. Very often, parents are keen on having their children improve their language skills for their future. Parents who choose our school are interested in the exchange trips we organize and the international side of the school. Most parents are from middle class or working class. They choose private education for their children even though it is expensive for them because they want the best. Quite often, they cannot help their children with their homework and cannot afford to send them abroad. Our school is very dynamic and we organize many activities to motivate our students (trips to England, a one month work experience in England since 2003, a two weeks work experience in Spain, an exchange with some pupils in Norway, integration seminary, revision week-end, conferences, outings,…). We have been organizing mobilities in England for 15 and odd students in vocational courses since 2002. We have started organizing mobilities in Spain in 2018. We have a long experience in that field and we wanted to offer the same opportunities to other students.