About Us

FLOWERS

We are four partners in the FLOW project and we have been working together for many years.
We are from…
– Jakobstads gymnasium in Jakobstad, Finland
– Europaschule Ostendorf-Gymnasium in Lippstadt, Germany
– Udens College in Uden, Netherlands
– Almunge skola near Uppsala, Sweden

Finnland
Jakobstads gymnasium is an upper secondary school with 340 students aged 15 to 19, and 25 teachers. The town of Pietarsaari (Jakobstad in Swedish) is situated on the west coast of Finland, which is a predominantly Swedish speaking area. Here in Pietarsaari, the Finnish speakers are in a minority, as opposed to the overall situation in Finland where Swedish speakers generally are the minority.
Jakobstad gymnasium offers five study programs: Arts, Music, Sports, Local Culture and heritage. In these programmes students have the opportunity to be creative and develop their entrepreneurial skills. We have always been an active school ready for new challenges. The future is constantly present in our everyday lives, guiding our actions and decisions – whether we are aware of that or not.
The school is part of the JA Company programme and has been very successful in the nationwide contest „Company of the year competition“. We have very far developed collaboration with the local business sector and the region development company Concordia. In that collaboration we with questions about what future workalike, products and services will look like.
In this project we can offer our partner schools the great knowledge of our school and region in the field of circular economy. What we wish to gain is return is our ability to predict future trends since our region, and in extension our students, need to be at the leading edge of entrepreneurial skills, since our region strongly depends on export. Therefore it is of absolute importance to establish connections to other European countries, which we can achieve with this project.

Germany
The Europaschule Ostendorf-Gymnasium is located in the mid-west of Germany in between Dortmund and Paderborn and provides general education in a local area. In August 2009 the school was awarded the title of “Europaschule”, which shows its commitment to the European idea.
There are about 800 students and 70 teachers at our school. The students are between 10 and 18 years old. There are some pupils with specific needs like pupils at risk of social exclusion, migrants and refugees. Integration is one of the basic aims of our school. From this it follows that language skills are getting more and more important even in daily school-life. All these pupils are supported by special staff – e.g. social worker, external teachers, language teachers, students and parents supporting social integration. The school has bilingual classes, which could be helpful for the other schools when it comes to fostering language skills (exchange of teaching methods, job shadowing).
There is a programme for vocational training called „kAoA“ („Kein Abschluss ohne Anschluss“), which starts for students at the age of 13 and goes on until they leave school. It‘s a programme organized by the national education agency and each school in Germany has to meet the given aims, but it‘s up to each school to organise the details. For the training we have two teachers in charge of career preparation. Included in this programme are „Boys‘ and Girls‘ Days“, „Bring your child to work“ as well as practical trainings in from 9 and 11. For the latter internship students are particularly requested to do their training abroad. We would like our students to profit from becoming more independent and self-organized in a national and European context with conveying future literacy in a practical and student-oriented way.
When it comes to digitalization the school has introduced the obligatory use of iPads from form 7 onwards plus offering a large number of iPads for flexible usage for the younger students. In every classroom there is a beamer, document camera and apple-TV to further the students‘ and teachers‘ digital competence. Every teacher was provided with an iPad in summer 2019. There are regular trainings for the teachers as well as workshops for the use of ICT in different subjects. All this is based on the agreements and regulations written down in the school‘s media curriculum.

Netherlands
Uden is a small town in the agricultural countryside, although most people work in industries and services. The North Brabant region is at the forefront of the high-tech industry in the Netherlands. In general, the level of education is quite high and the region has low unemployment.
Udens College offers all forms of secondary education, both theoretical and professional. We have a total of around 2,500 students divided over two locations. Our VET location has 1300 pupils and about 170 staff members. Our school has a wide variety in nationalities, children from foreign workers and refugees. We develop students with the opportunity to develop themselves both as humans and intellectually.
Udens College has a long history in international activities and in integrating the European dimension into the school curriculum. The school is one of 37 ELOS schools (Europe as a learning environment in schools) in the Netherlands, which promote European citizenship. The world and especially Europe is getting smaller and international connections are intensifying. We thus have to prepare future employees for this big challenge. So UC doesn‘t only focus on its region or province, the process is rather taking place in a lot of European countries, so we want to exchange experiences and learn from schools for a better educational system in Europe. Not for ourselves, but for our pupils, that own the future.
Schools reinvent themselves, changes are part of its development. As today‘s jobs change, the skills and competences needed for these future jobs are changing from today on. Employees of the future must be self-confident, cooperative, able to act independently, responsible, used to ICT, innovative and creative both in thinking and problem solving. 5 years ago UC started to change its educational system, which is due to a changing society. Our school system ist best defined in 4 major cornerstones: curriculum, coaching of pupils, possibility to develop a talent and finally the possibility to expand the class curriculum with extra classes. Changing the organization, program and curriculum without dropping results, experience and skills is only the first step in the bigger story we call the Udens model, which might also offer initiatives to our partners.

Sweden
Almunge skola is a small school situated in the countryside near the city of Uppsala in the mid-east of Sweden. Uppsala has got the oldest university of Scandinavia and the educational level in the area is quite high.
We have about 400 students from the age of 6-16 years. The teachers and the administration of the school are very skilled and committed and we use science-based methods to develop the teaching process. Language studies and social science are important parts of the education. The students learn English from the age of 7. Furthermore, they can choose between German and Spanish from the age of 11. There are quite a few students with special needs at the school. Compared to other parts of the district in the village of Almunge only a small percentage of the parents have got a university education. Inclusion of students with special needs and integration of immigrants are important issues for us. We‘ve got mixed ability classes to foster the students‘ ability to learn from each other.
We want to prepare our students for a global and flexible job market, which requires new capabilities. The majority of our students have a non-privileged background, which has not given them the natural gateway to innovative entrepreneurship. Because of that we are interested in learning more about how to proceed in finding different tools and methods to foster the creativity of the students, their ability to solve problems, their ability to cooperate and communicate.
To give the students the opportunity to practice communication and interaction Almunge skola has established a partnership with a local high school. Furthermore, we have got qualifies coaching as part of the curriculum to give the students equal opportunities to develop and succeed. In addition to this, we a developed a close partnership with local companies, organizations and entrepreneurs. An important part of this cooperation is creating creative venues where students and our partners have the opportunity to meet and discuss future careers. For example, the school organizes job-fairs called „Your future“ where the students have the chance to meet people of various education and work background and ask questions face to face. Almunge skola also organizes annual internships for the 8th and 9th grade students. Almunge skola also uses advanced methods of speaker training for the students. A digital world requires an even higher ability to communicate orally and we are aware that we need to prepare our students for that. Practicing argumentative skills and advertising are part of the curriculum. This is a part we can offer to the other schools.