Agrupamento de Escolas de Moure e Ribeira do Neiva – Vilaverde – Portugal

Agrupamento de Escolas de Moure e Ribeira do Neiva (AEMRN) has an autonomy contract with the Ministry of Education. This has a set of goals that involve the implementation of a Strategic Action Plan in which the promotion of the success is the priority dimension of the organisation. The present project aims to solve some of the breaches that have been detected while preparing the autonomy contract and that can be solved by training our staff.
Our cluster of schools is located in Vila Verde’s municipality, Braga’s district. This municipality occupies an area of 229 Km2, with a population of 48.000 inhabitants.

The cluster of schools Agrupamento de Escolas de Moure e Ribeira do Neiva (AEMRN) was created in the school years 2012/2013 from the joining of a set of schools called Agrupamento de Escolas de Moure and another set of schools named Agrupamento de Escolas de Ribeira do Neiva. Today, the cluster has 16 schools with 9 kindergarten, 5 primary schools and 2 middle/high schools.

The area of influence of our cluster is wide going west and north-western of the municipality till the borders with Ponte de Lima and Barcelos. This year 1330 pupils, of which 60 are adult education students, attended the schools of AEMRN. Some are united in Parents associations (2), each one with 11 unpaid persons in the board. We also have students council with 30 students.

The social-economic structure of the population is below regional average. The level of education of our pupils’ parents is, in its majority, low and so is their social and economic level. One can state that , in general, our pupils come from families that have economic problems taking into account the percentage of students that have economical help by ASE ( Ação Social Escolar)– 50,7%.This is an imposing reality and can become an extra hardship regarding the pupils’ study conditions and their future expectations.

The educational level of parents and families is also a strong indicator as to their occupation/ area of work: more than 50% of mothers are either at home or unemployed and around 40% of fathers work on farms or in jobs connected with the building area, which has, in the last years, been under a severe crisis in our country. Therefore, many of them are either unemployed or have emigrated. Regarding school results, the schools have been evolving in order to guarantee that all pupils finish their education process successfully. There have been some professional and vocational courses that have responded to our pupils’ needs. However and unfortunately there is still a global retention rate of 8,81%. This problem increases with the evolving of the school’s grade: 1st cycle ( 3,88%), 2nd cycle (9,27%) and 3rd cycle (11,37%). This may be greatly justified by success inhibitor factors such as: great disinterest and lack of endeavour in Mathematics and Languages subjects; lack of expectations towards learning from both pupils and parents; reduced cultural, social and economic level in many families; illiteracy or very low educational levels; domestic violence and alcoholism; weak participation of parents in pupils’ school lives decreasing as pupils become older.

Having in mind all these aspects , the cluster AEMRN regards thinking and changing the way it works as fundamental so it can respond adequately in order to provide with and develop in pupils the necessary autonomy, responsibility , critical and creative thinking, close-knit and open to today’s world demands. Moreover, we are very interested in learning from different systems of education in Europe and develop the necessary awareness of the European dimension and global classroom thinking. We have been involved in Comenius and Erasmus + projects as well as with the European clubs network. We have also tried to contribute to pedagogical innovation with the submission of project » EUincludesU for Erasmus+ KA2 in the previous year (approved but not funded).

Our cluster has decided to orientate our action towards people (starting on our students and staff and evolving to the community) and to what they can be and do, as they are the most important asset schools can have, emphasizing the organizational happiness as a resource that generates value tuned with knowledge and effective and efficient management.

Based on the description of the organisation that preceeds, the cluster created 4 years ago a team with the name of «Inovar». This is a multitask team with different elements from school staff (Board, projects, improvement, autonomy among others). Their activities include project preparation (national and international), monitoring and follow-up activities to ensure that all previewed activities including dissemination and evaluation are undertaken with the appropriate quality.