Through this first Erasmus project in which our school has participated, our main objective was to internationalise the school and open it up to Europe in such a way that our students would be aware of all the possibilities offered by the European Union and that they would see the benefits that this could bring them both academically, at work and on a personal level. We also wanted to offer our students possibilities to learn and live experiences that otherwise, due to their socio-economic level, they would not be able to obtain. In addition, at teacher level, we wanted to motivate all the members of our teaching staff to continue training and discovering new methodologies to motivate their students and achieve better academic results in general and reduce school dropout rates.
Our secondary school is located in the town of Callosa d'En Sarrià, Alicante, on the east coast of Spain. Here we enjoy good weather all year round, and the sea is only a few kilometres away. Our school opened in 2002, and has approximately 42 classrooms, some of them being specific classrooms such as laboratory, music room and drawing room. IES Rodolfo Llopis is a public centre for secondary education, baccalaureate and vocational training in the town of Callosa d'En Sarrià, Alicante. Our secondary school has 653 students between the ages 11-18. Our high school has a very important IMMIGRANT community, as our town constantly needs workers for the fields for a few decades. In special, we have students from South America (Ecuadorians, Bolivians and Argentinians) and Central European (Romanians). In total a 30.4% of the students comes from other countries. This social reality of our students and their families, determines that our centre is characterized by having a MEDIUM-LOW academic performance, since many families cannot help their children with their study at home, they cannot afford to pay for private classes, they don't have reading habits, etc.