Paths to Europe, Encounters and Inclusion thanks to Sport

As part of the policy of developing European programmes in primary schools and in the most disadvantaged areas of the Normandy Academy, the Val d'Aure secondary school and the 4 primary schools making up a Priority Education Network have developed an Erasmus + project on inclusion and citizenship with Greek and Bulgarian partners. The 10 European primary schools and the 2 secondary schools involved in the project provide schooling for vulnerable groups - disadvantaged social backgrounds, migrants or refugees, people with disabilities or those with great educational difficulties. For many pupils, withdrawal into their own environment and culture prevails over openness to others; the feeling of belonging to the same European community is weak, and the ability to project themselves with confidence into an open, difficult world is weak. Action to change this situation is being taken in each school. The Erasmus+ project has been developed to pool these good practices at European level, to go further in the policies of inclusion and development of citizenship in each school. The objectives of the project were defined by all the partners:- to develop or strengthen a policy of social inclusion and the feeling of belonging to the same European community in schools by relying on exchanges of practices between European educational teams, fed by the contributions of the other actors in the territories, and by involving families- to build a European network of inclusive schools- to enable each pupil, whatever his or her social, geographical or cultural situation and difficulties, to live a European meeting experience at a distance and/or in person and to develop key competences.- to contribute to the construction of a European citizen's pathway for everyone through activities to discover others, a common European heritage, and work on the values of sport, a vector of inclusion428 French, Greek and Bulgarian pupils, aged 8 to 14, with different profiles and difficulties (disabled, with difficulties at school, allophone pupils, pupils in a local School Inclusion Unit, in the Adapted General and Professional Education Section, refugee or migrant children), 70 educational, teaching and medical-social staff will participate directly in the project. Local authorities, youth education associations, sports clubs and top athletes who sponsor the schools will contribute to the project by participating in the social and educational inclusion process within each of the territories concerned.The activities carried out in each of the schools, with regular exchanges between all classes on the eTwinning space of the project and face-to-face meetings between pupils, will be based on three axes: - Discovery of the others , their class, their school, their immediate environment, their culture, their region and their country to enable each one to identify what makes them different and what brings them together and thus fight against representations and develop a feeling of belonging to the same European community rich in its diversity.- work on the values of sport in the motivating context for pupils of the 18th School Olympic Games to be held in Normandy in 2022 and the Olympic Games in 2024, which will enable pupils to develop friendship, mutual aid, solidarity, cooperation, team spirit, perseverance and respect for differences, with a practical application in European Olympiads which will help them to have a part in the processu of living in harmony together across borders.At the end of the project, pupils will have developed key competences (cooperation, creativity, critical thinking, problem solving, computer thinking, communication) that can be transferred into learning with a measurable impact on their academic success and their academic ambition. The school climate in the schools will have evolved in a positive way with less incivility, more respect between pupils and attitudes that are both more inclusive and more open. The greater presence of families in the school with a restored bond of trust is also expected. The pupils, who will be called upon throughout the project to build inclusive activities, promote Europe through their productions and implement the values of sport in their daily lives, will have acquired measurable civic attitudes in the initiatives they take in the school and on their territory.The theme of inclusion in schools and on the territories is at the heart of the project: the work carried out over 3 years by the teams should make it possible to create a European network of inclusive schools, capable of sharing good practices and initiating new projects in the service of inclusion.