Go-car-go Plus

<< Background >>Motivation to apply for the project was to revive Go-Car-Go project, which was successfully implemented before the Corona time and stopped naturally when schools were closed. Our idea was to start the project in partnerships with primary schools and Educational Institute from Austria, which we had cooperated with in the past, to manufacture a similar little car, upgraded with an electrical drive. The project enabled primary schools to improve their STEM competences, which they lack as their pupils can acquire them only within the optional subject called technics and technology. The project of manufacturing a little car based on the chassis, which was the same for all primary schools, encouraged team work so the pupils developed their creative skills when upgrading the chassis, learnt about material properties when choosing appropriate materials, searched for the most appropriate spare parts to build the car, developed their business skills, improved their manual skills as the pupils had to build their own little cars themselves. School Centre Ptuj succeeded in raising the interest of the primary school pupils for technical/shortage occupations in terms of increasing the number of enrolled students in such programs.<< Objectives >>The basic aim of the project was for all of the primary school teams to manufacture a unique electrically driven little car and present it at the final meeting. All the activities enabled the primary school pupils to improve their STEM competences and to get to know the technical programmes (occupations) provided by School Centre Ptuj. The project activities enabled School Centre Ptuj to promote its technical and above all shortage occupations, for which there is a great demand on the job market. By implementing the project, we also wanted to reduce the number of dropouts in secondary schools.<< Implementation >>The main activity of the project was to manufacture an electrically driven little car. The rest of the activities, which supported the main one, included manufacturing of the chassis for little cars, organizing working meetings to be able to plan in detail, analyse and compare participants’ work, exchanging experiences and reporting about project development, developing Go-Car-Go mobile app and the internet site to promote the project and shortage occupations, and last but not least organizing the final presentation and competition of driving little cars.<< Results >>The very concrete final outcome of the project was 7 unique electrically driven little cars, which were presented at the final meeting at the School Centre in Ptuj on 19th May 2022. Those cars were the result of a very successful project work of all project partners, who participated in all phases of the project, from its planning to the final product. Every of the planned activities was successfully finalized and influenced pupils’ interest for technical occupations. The indirect goal of the project was also to convince as many pupils as possible to continue their studies at technical schools in which we greatly succeeded. This school year we recorded a 24% increase in the number of students in mechanical engineering programmes. It can be established that the project Go-Car-Go had a great impact on that because there are a lot of newcomers who took part in the project when they were still in their primary schools.