Learning for 21st Century: skills for the future

The Gymnasium Aradippou was founded in 1978. The school provides primary basic education programme (students aged 11-13). The number of students is 512 and they are living in the village. The most of them are Cypriots and we have students from Syria, Iraq, Palestine and Russia. Trying to cope with the challenges of such a heterogeneous school population, it is the school’s priority to foster the holistic development of all its members by promoting personal, academic and professional growth. To reach these educational goals, it is determined in the School Educational Project that pedagogical and vocational practice should be based on a set of underlying democratic principles, such as mutual respect, acceptance of difference, promotion of divergent thinking, cooperation and tolerance. The Cyprus educational system is divided in four types of schools and the students attend one year of kindergarten (age 6), six years of primary school (age 6-12), three years of High school (age 13-15) and three years of Senior High school (age 16-18). The students of our school attend various courses every day and the total amount of school hours that they attend per week is approximately 34-35. The students are at school from 7:30 a.m. till 13:35 p.m. The staff consists of 70 teachers. The teachers have been using IT skills in class so we are particularly interested in improving our skills in this area. Our students have been learning English for quite a few years so their level of English is adequate enough to support the project. The school facilities include a library, a laboratory for sciences for the students, a computer laboratory, free internet use, a class especially for art and another for music, a play field for physical education. The students are offered to take part in: • Subject competitions, • To participate in international projects, • To develop their interest and talents in folk dance groups, choir and ensembles, drawing and painting circle, • In sports, The students have shown very good results in art, foreign languages, folk dance, biology, mathematics competitions. The school has good experience in: • Etwinning projects, • GLOBE (Global, Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment) • F.E.E.E (foundation for Environmental Education in Europe) • Young Reporters for the environments. School's priority-every student’s individual improvement. The values of the school are: -Respect – an ability to listen, understand and accept others’ opinions, thoughts and needs. -Tolerance – an ability to accept different opinions, social status, views, looks and lifestyle choices within the norms set by the school. -Responsibility – everyone’s duty to teach and learn in order to improve results in education. -Cooperation – gathering of every member of the society to achieve common goals and solve problem