The Elly-Heuss-Gymnasium Weiden is a state school for girls only (about 550 pupils, 50 teachers), offering special education in languages, social and economic studies (grammar school).
The school is situated in Bavaria, Germany close to the Czech border with a population of about 60000 inhabitants and many surrounding villages. The pupils come from mid-low social class with a lot of inhabitants whose academic level is not very high. Very often, the girls are the first in their families to take up university education. The school is regularly monitored by internal and external evaluators in addition to the state-run district controlling system of standards and quality.
Needs, goals and perspectives for the school by joining this project: The school is situated in a rather rural area with limited job opportunities regarding the qualification the pupils theoretically gain by visiting a grammar school.
Consequently, lots of brain power drains off to bigger cities and the development of the region does not profit from the effort put into the school-education of the pupils. As the school has experienced great advances from work placements in all sectors, we now implement further contacts and thereby improve the quality and intensity of cooperation. As a specialist school for languages, placements in a European context fit the school strategy as well.
Especially the aspect of digitalization of teaching and learning methods is in the focus of the latest school development plan, so the project should foster the openness to “new” methods and create motivation in both teachers and pupils. Most aspects can be included in regular classes or existing work-groups (environm., social) and into a new initiative consumertraining ( www.verbraucherschule.de)
The media experts, who will take part in the first project meeting in Weiden, will give the school the possibility to learn about latest developments first-hand. Key person: Dir. Reinhard Hauer and Erasmus+ coord. Ralph Conrad (pedagogical coordinator) (substitute Monika Kitzinger). The Erasmus+ coordinator Ralph Conrad has established the school-exchanges (exept the French exchange) and has supervised them for more than ten years.
The school has a broad European experience. Apart from school-partnerships with a Czech school (Gymnazium Tachov), an English School (Birmingham), a Spanish school (Rubi) and two French schools (Caen, Issy le Moulineaux) with exchange visits each year, students have been participating for many years in the Model European Parliament in Kerkrade (NL). From 2012 to 2014 the school took part in a Comenius Project (Black to Green, dealing with renewable energies) and from 2016 to 2019 in Erasmus+ project (Something For Nothing, dealing with cooperation of school and the surrounding civil society).
With the new project we benefit from the results of these projects, intensify the contacts and develop further cooperation (regular placements and meetings, Erasmus+/UN 2030 Fair for our region).