Summary

KA229 Erasmus+ School Exchange Partnership Project "Raising Aspirations for Social Inclusion" (RASI)

Participants

Applicant organisation
Seinäjoen lyseo, Finland
Partner organisations
Centrul Scolar de Educatie Incluziva Alba Iulia, Romania
O.D.P.F. Istituto Santachiara, Italy
Hietaniemi Friskoleförening, Sweden
Southend YMCA Community School, UK

Our project "Raising Aspirations for Social Inclusion" (RASI) was implemented in order to increase SEN students' integration into society by improving the quality of the educational services they are provided.

The main objective is the exchange of good practices in teaching SEN students. What could the participating organisations learn from each other in order to improve their school culture? We will develop, test and evaluate innovative methods, activities and strategies to stimulate SEN students' participation in both school and social life preventing their early school leaving and discrimination. We want to develop the quality of teaching and to improve students' school motivation by increasing their self-esteem and helping them to experience success in a school environment where the focus often lies on academic skills.

The participation in this project is expected to bring long-lasting positive effects on each school and its culture. Teachers will be encouraged to share ideas, compare their experiences transnationally and to integrate good practices and methods into daily activities.

Each partner school has formed a project team which includes the principal, the coordinator and 2-3 teachers or experts in teaching SEN. These teams manage the activities.

Each school has chosen four specific areas/issues they would like to improve in their organisations during the project. These issues are developed during the whole project, but there will be a certain time period to focus on each issue separately. They will be introduced and discussed in six short-term joint staff training events during a two-year period. Every event is named covering the content of the chosen issues and will be attended by chosen representatives from each partner school.

Short-term joint staff training events:
1. Finland 10/2018
Every student is everybody's student
2. England 2/2019
Giving hope for children on edge, dropouts turned to be success stories
3. Sweden 4/2019
Whole municipality co-operates for children
4. Finland (for principals) 10/2019
Leading a school for everybody
5. Romania 2/2020
Practical methods to develop SEN-students' education
6. Italy 4/2020
From school to society

The RASI project home page shares information on the participating schools, their development issues, the project timetable and documentation of all the experiments and activities in each school. At the end of the project we will have guideline booklets - both electronic and printed - as a concrete result of the project.

The aim is that after the two-year project each participating school has developed operational models for its challenges described in the beginning and several innovative models learned from the partner schools in other countries. According to the aim, the common elaboration of practices inspires teachers to develop their work continually and keeps up hope for the quality results.

Students benefit in multiple ways - solutions for the urgent challenges in each school are developed and, according to the Hawthorne effect, students become inspired to study when the teachers are inspired by the experimental activities. Thus, we keep up the hope that in spite of difficulties the future of the youngsters will be good and our project will promote equality in European schools and future society.

The results are disseminated in participating schools, in local network (other schools, authorities, health care, social care, police), in regional, national and international networks of each school.