MEGA - Make Europe Great Again - is a project that aims to strengthen European education in schools by creating a multilingual platform and dedicated resources for secondary school teachers. All studies confirm that Europe often remains abstract and unknown to people and young people. Informing more and informing better appears to be a line of work that should be carried out in the school context. This is what Europe's ambitions have been for 20 years and what 90% of young Europeans are calling for. However, it should be noted that education about Europe does not exist or exists only to a limited extent in pupils' curricula. MEGA aims to respond to this by working around 3 objectives: - To identify, collect and organise a database of European educational resources on Europe to make what exists accessible in one place. - To create training modules on education for Europe for teachers who are often at a loss when it comes to European issues - To develop resources adapted to teachers in different subjects (cross-curricular approach) to provide them with quality tools and supports to help them in their work. MEGA is run by 6 partners, experts in the European subject and teaching from France, Germany, Croatia, Spain and Portugal. During 33 months, these organisations will work to build a coherent set of ressources dedicated to the teaching of Europe at school, adapted to the realities and contexts of their respective countries, but also to any other European country. The work programme includes - national white papers to identify the context of each country - a one-stop-shop platform for access to educational resources on Europe - e-learning modules for in-service teacher training - the creation of comprehensive (ready-to-use) resources and courses for teachers - promoting among their peers why and how to educate about Europe at school. Over the entire project, more than 300 secondary school teachers will be trained and equipped to educate about Europe and dozens of schools will lead lessons on Europe. MEGA will have a direct impact on teachers, on the teaching of Europe at school, on the European dimension in schools and will contribute to disseminating and raising awareness of education about Europe beyond the initial spheres of the project. The consortium is committed to this ambition and hopes that, through the project's outputs, a precise analysis of the impact on pupils and teachers, and a dissemination work targeting the education authorities in the partner countries, will help to support national guidelines and European initiatives in favour of a better knowledge of Europe and the development of a stronger European feeling.
MEGA aimed to strengthen a sense of belonging to the European project, both among pupils aged 13 to 17, at a time when they are learning to become citizens, and among teachers and education professionals, so that they feel more confident and open to education about EU in the classroom and at school. To achieve this, the project set itself the following objectives: - to propose a new way of teaching about EU - so as to encourage reflection on our role as European citizens; - to research and bring together existing high-quality resources for teaching about EU and to save teachers time; - enhance teachers' knowledge of the subject by offering them innovative training tools; - to support quick and easy implementation of education about EU through ready-to-use lesson plans tailored to pupils' knowledge. As a project in line with the missions of the consortium partners, MEGA wanted to have an impact on several levels: - the target audiences - by providing them with usable and reusable resources and tools; - the partner organizations themselves - by giving them greater legitimacy to talk about Europe, train teachers and address school audiences; - national and European stakeholders - by encouraging them to make changes.
The MEGA project - Make Europe Great Again - began with the observation that, although schools play a fundamental role in education about EU and the creation of a European identity, there are questions about how this knowledge is passed on to pupils. The EU can only be taught adequately with considerable effort, given the wide range of topics; approaches are often limited, and little is said about Europe in everyday life, the Europe of citizens. When teachers are asked whether they feel confident teaching about the EU, they say they are sometimes overwhelmed by the complexity of the subject. Confronted with a wide range of documents, websites and resources that they have to research and adapt, most consider getting knowledge about the EU to be a difficult and time-consuming task. This lack of initial and ongoing training can be a barrier to education about EU in the classroom. Yet research shows that an overwhelming majority of young Europeans believe that learning about EU should be part of compulsory school education (2017). That is why MEGA wanted to bring a new way of teaching about Europe, by supporting the work of secondary school teachers and pupils in Croatia, France, Germany, Portugal and Spain.