One school for all

This scholastic year the Bishop's Conservatory School of Victoria, Gozo, initiated a Comenius 1 school project entitled "one school for all", based on inclusive education for special needs students. The partner schools are Heinz-Brandt-Oberschule in Berlin, which is also the co-ordinating school, Rettarholtsskoli in Reykjavik, IES Antonio Jose Cavanilles in Alicante, Zespol Szkol Ogolnokszta Icacych in Chalupki (Poland), and 2nd Lyceum of Alimos in Athens.

The partner schools had a preliminary meeting in November 2002 in Alicante to discuss the project's goals and how to submit the proposal. Following acceptance, the partner schools had the first project meeting in Berlin to familiarise themselves with the education system of each country and to visit some of the schools there.

Each school presented the topics it was going to work on and the methodology applied to teach them. During the scholastic year, the schools sent lesson notes on their topics with comments. Last April a meeting for the co-ordinators was held in Reykjavik to evaluate the project. The Icelandic hosts arranged visits to various schools.

At the Bishop Conservatory School we worked with seven special needs students in the primary and secondary school. Four of these have learning disabilities while the other three are hearing-impaired who also have learning difficulties to various extents.

Two teachers, Ms Doris Mizzi and Ms Marianne Brincat, two facilitators, Ms Margaret Grech and Ms Marie Georgette Bajada, and two peripatetic teachers of the deaf, Ms Gemma Rolls and I were involved with this project. I was also the co-ordinator.

The topic we chose was literacy. At the beginning of the school year, we all prepared a student profile to record the performance level of each student participant in the subjects taught at school. Special emphasis was laid on language development (Maltese and English). We then formulated the teaching unit to be implemented in the project for each student. This included the teaching targets, the resources to be used and the implementation procedure. Finally we had to record any significant achievement.

This project brought members of staff closer. We conferred with each other to select the appropriate educational material and visual aids to help the student participants increase their literacy skills in Maltese and English, depending on each student.

We shared our teaching experiences and pooled our resources. This became very evident when an exhibition about the Comenius 1 project, which included the students' work, was put up at the end of May when two teachers, Ms Kathrin Lokoiczyk and Ms Daniela Tschiersch from the Heinz-Brandt Oberschule in Berlin visited the Bishop's Conservatory School. The highlight of this visit, however was a play, Fil-Kampanja, purposely written by Ms Doris Mizzi. The special needs students were among the main actors.

The German teachers were welcomed by Fr Carm Gauci, the head of Bishop's Conservatory School, who briefed them about its operation, and taken round the classes. They were greatly impressed by the behaviour and performance of the students They also watched a lesson given to one of the hearing-impaired students by the peripatetic teacher of the deaf on a one-to-one basis. They were not acquainted with this type of service and hence found it very interesting.

During their stay the German teachers were invited by the school to join the secondary school students on a visit to the Caravaggio exhibition at Carafa Stores in Vittoriosa. They also called at the EUPU office at the Ministry of Education to meet Mr Joe Sammut. Later they visited Skola Helen Keller to which the peripatetic service for hearing-impaired students is attached.

Both the members of staff involved in the project as well as the student participants are very pleased with the learning experiences derived from this initiative.

This Comenius project has been developed and carried out with European funds through the Socrates Programme of the EUPU.