The main aim of the project was to involve the 2 partners in long-term initiatives as part of European Erasmus + projects (“Classe Europa” at the Institut D'Alzon, aimed at promoting the values of the European Union through exchanges between member countries and the occasional inclusion of Portuguese in non-linguistic subjects, and strengthening the dynamism and roots of the European French language section at Viatodos secondary school). In this way, the creation of steering teams in each structure, the introduction of common cooperation and management tools and exchanges of practices between teachers have strengthened skills. The project also aimed to have an impact on the pupils of the two partner structures by enabling them to diversify their civic, linguistic, digital, artistic and cultural pathways through their involvement in a cross-curricular project, recognition of their achievements and validation of their skills with the introduction of assessment tools at the various stages of the project and the organisation of artistic competitions and citizenship award ceremonies including the Europass.
We wanted to set up an educational cooperation based on the exchange of practices between teams from the two schools. We were motivated and genuinely interested in taking part in a European approach designed to develop a collaborative Franco-Portuguese exchange project focusing not only on linguistic (French, Portuguese), digital, artistic and cultural practices, but also on opening up and educating pupils about European citizenship. Having recently obtained Erasmus accreditation for the 2023/2024 school year, the Institut D'Alzon wanted to enhance its skills by becoming the project leader and benefiting from the transfer of these skills from the Portuguese school, which has already run several Erasmus projects. Finally, this project aimed to promote equal opportunities by obtaining the Erasmus grant intended to help us adopt an inclusive approach, targeting pupils with special needs. We responded to the targeted needs by developing our skills: tools for educational cooperation between teams were put in place, European added value was provided and the inclusion of pupils was taken into account.