The school is pretty new. It was established in 1999. We have a wish to become a Classical gymnasium with emphasis on humanities (namely languages) with sciences and a vast choice of extra-curricular activities. We want to prepare students to understand, contribute to, and to succeed in a rapidly changing society, and thus make the world a better and more just place. We also aim at leading in generating practical and theoretical knowledge that enables people to understand our world better and to improve conditions for local and global communities.
Currently there are 1100 students aged 7-19 in our school. There are students belonging to the national minority as well as immigrants among Lithuanian students. Thus our teachers help them to acquire the skills necessary for integration into the majority group. There are also children with specific needs and they receive the support from specialist teachers. The school has 104 teachers in total and a speech therapist.
Taking into consideration that our country is trying to get over the economic crises, a part of students’ parents are on the dole, getting by just on the subsidies given by the government. Students from such families get free school meals and financial support for the acquisition of learning tools. These students get into the risk group and need special cultural and educational programmes. These are the reasons why our school also wants and has been engaged in an effort to address the phenomenon of school dropout as a social problem, with several extra-curricular projects (The European School Milk Programme, local eco-school projects, innovative projects, Comenius projects and many others) in order to integrate the educational and social role of the family and school.

 

An average age of our teachers is 40 years old. This is a strong team of a highly qualified teaching staff. Overall, over 30% of our teachers have more than 12 years of teaching experience.  More than 40% of our teachers hold master’s degree and the qualification of teaching methodologist. 20% of our teachers are experts in their subjects. Our staff is really enthusiastic about teaching and dedicated to the goals of education, and committed to preparing students for the multicultural society of the 21st century. Our school teachers have a strong desire to improve and develop their educational approaches, so we are constantly carrying out different programmes and activities that provide our school with the required expertise to participate in this Erasmus plus project.
 

These are activities and experiences in the areas relevant for this project:

1 – We developed a continuous integrated interdisciplinary project “I Love My Hometown Vilnius“ in 2011 - 2012. The main aim of the project was to develop students‘ linguistic and intercultural competences.

 

2 – We have taken part in the local Green Schools project “Darom” (Let’s do) since 1999. It is a massive annual action held in spring in Lithuania inviting volunteers to clean surroundings and encouraging ecological thinking citizenship, social participation and communal society. In addition, our primary school students participate in an ecological educational project “Auk ir žaliuok, medeli!’’ (Grow Green, the Tree!) from September to December. For this reason, our experience as a Green School will be very useful.
 

3 – Our school carries out a charitable project every year before Christmas. This campaign is organized for children in Antazave Child Care Home. Many of them have no parents, and our aim is to share Christmas joy with the orphans by collecting Christmas gifts for them. Our community is very active in this campaign.

The key people involved in this project are really committed teachers who are capable of developing ambitious projects and working in teams with colleagues from other schools or our own school. Our previous work experience in organizing activities that we undertake in our school, as well as our creativity and inspiration will contribute to the development of the project and will enrich approaches to education. Furthermore, the head mistress, the managers and other members of our community are always willing to help the teachers and students. The headmistress is really into the enhancement of digital integration in the class. Finally, the manager of basic education is an IT teacher and he has been to different conferences and workshops on that matter. He is also in charge of the Website of the school.