"Ethnic minority integration school hub project, implemented by CEIDUEM, Bulgaria, in partnership with Eurothink - Center for European Strategies, Skopje, Northern Macedonia and San Carlos Primary School, Madrid, Kingdom of Spain, started on 01.09.2018 d and will end by the end of February 2020.The objectives of the project were to improve the conditions for successful school integration and early prevention of dropping out of students from vulnerable groups through the successful involvement of all participants, including teachers, school psychologists and / or pedagogical advisors, social / youth workers and political experts. So far, all major activities have been implemented - 2 transnational meetings of partner organizations that took place in Bulgaria (one in the beginning of the project and one in December 2019). A Good Practice Guide from partners' activities has been developed. The results dissemination activities and a comprehensive assessment of the impact of project implementation are forthcoming. Representatives of the partner organizations participated in the first transnational meeting, which took place from 25-27 October 2018. The program of the meeting included activities related to the review of the project and upcoming activities, their implementation, presentation of the cooperation agreements, and the award of certificates for participation. The partners agreed and agreed on the project commitments. In the period March 10-15, 2019, the first cross-border mobility project took place at the Park Hotel Moscow in Sofia.The event was attended by 33 representatives of the partner organizations - 13 from Bulgaria and 10 each from Northern Macedonia and Spain.The event was opened by Manuel Radeva, Director of CEIDUEM and Project Manager. She presented the goals and activities of the project, the mobility program in Bulgaria and the funding body Erasmus + program.During the mobility, creative workshops were held, good practices and presentations on the role of parenting communities were presented.A working visit was also held at the Nayden Gerov secondary school, Plovdiv, which has extensive experience in educational integration and implementation of student retention policies in the education system.In the period June 27 - July 2, 2019, the second cross-border mobility project took place at the Continental Hotel in Skopje, Northern Macedonia.The participants again included representatives and experts from organizations, educators, school psychologists, pedagogical advisors and youth workers.The mobility program included activities related to sharing creative methods for working with children from vulnerable groups, developing a methodology structure and a plan for adapting good practices from the three countries, a working visit to school, a webinar and meeting with political figures, and representatives of state institutions responsible for educational integration. All participants had the opportunity to share their experiences and expressed their satisfaction with the discussions and working visits. A visit was also made to the largest school in N. Macedonia and one of the largest segregated schools in general (entirely Roma) in the Shuto Orizari neighborhood in Skopje.The third cross-border mobility of the project took place from 18 to 23 September 2019 in Madrid, Spain.The theme of mobility was ""From Practice to Policy"".The mobility program included working visits to institutions and organizations working with children from vulnerable groups, presenting activities to prevent dropping out of the educational system, targeted activities for integration and socialization of children and students from different ethnic groups, a webinar and meeting with political figures and representatives of state institutions responsible for educational integration.A meeting was held with representatives of the Vilaverde municipality of Madrid, responsible for families and minorities.As part of the mobility, a fully segregated school was visited in the Valécas area - Public School Núñez de Arenas, where mainly Roma children and students were studying.There was a meeting with the Foundation FSG (Fundacion Secretariado Gitano), which mainly deals with social and intercultural issues, including education.At the beginning of December 2019, the last meeting of the partner organizations took place in Sofia, Bulgaria.The three teams had the opportunity to share their experience of participating in the project, as well as the benefits for organizations, participants in mobility and for educational institutions and organizations at local and national level resulting from the implementation of the activities.During the meeting, a presentation of good practices was presented and discussed and approved."

<< Objectives >>1. Contribution to reducing early school leaving of children by providing a learning environment supportive for studentswho have difficulties to succeed in established formal education systems;2. Raising digital competences of educators;3. Foster creativity, innovation and modernization in education to raise digital competences and motivatedisadvantaged students to get involved; and,4. Facilitate inclusion by application of digital know-how.<< Implementation >>1. Develop Training needs report for improvements of digital competences;2. Create Training programme for improvements of educators' digital competences;3. Develop Training package for Educators;4. Toolkit for Students;5. Guide for school application that ensure wide implementation of digital competences;6. Implement joint staff training for integration of digital tools in teaching process (program piloting);7. Implemented teacher trainings at national level (50 participants per country).<< Results >>Results: 1. Overview of teachers development need for digital competences (bottom-up approach);2. Training program for teacher training - Introducing digital tools in teaching process;3. Training package for Educators;4. InSchool Toolkit for Students;5. Trained participants' staff;6. Trained teachers on national level (at least 200);7. Shared model to other schools/ organizations (via SEG/ E-twining);8. Improved teachers’ digital competences;9. Reduced number of early school leavers.

While analyzing students’ learning achievements in three regions it has been noticed that the achievements do not always correspond to the national average and one of the factors that might have a positive influence on students’ achievements is the improvement of students’ personal progress. Considering this situation, the problem, which has been solved during the project activities, was the implementation of new modern teaching methods and methods of student personal progress’ assessment. Seeking systematic changes in the educational system of participating regions in the project, the decision has been made as concerns implementation of interregional strategical partnership, the impact of the project has been done on general education. The project was implemented together with partners from three countries: Lithuania (Prienai Region Municipality and Prienai “Azuolas” progymnasium, Prienai “Revuona” basic school, Prienai “Ziburys” gymnasium), Portugal (Alijó Municipality Government and school Agrupamento de Escolas D. Sancho II) and Spain (School Ildefonso Serrano). This kind of partnership was chosen because it helped us to achieve the aims of this project and to implement sustainable changes in education quality in schools. The main problem we tried to solve was the average results of mathematics and all of us felt the need to update teaching and learning methods, monitoring and evaluation methods of the student's individual progress. The strategies of schools foresee the increase of educational success in the area of mathematics. All partner schools had similar strategic goals according to education quality, so international partnership helped us to find more possibilities to solve relevant problems together. Seeking the aim of the project with the help of teachers’ reflective practices, new modern teaching methods and methods of student personal progress’ assessment were implemented keeping their continuation in the groups of different aged students. In order to achieve this aim, teachers who work with students from different age groups were gathered together for the searching, testing, and applying effective, modern individual progress encouraging assessment and teaching methods, and there were made agreements concerning the continuation of applied methods in groups of different age levels. The agreements were established at municipal and school level legislation, thus ensuring the sustainability of project outcomes. Following the practices of implementing the project activities, methodological recommendations were prepared on the application of modern teaching and assessment methods at different age levels. The essentiality of all project activities is to strengthen the learning educational community (school, municipality, as well as at an interregional level) in order to improve student learning achievements through new and effective methods for assessing their individual progress in different age levels. That is, the progress of ongoing discussions about the activities of the project, with the mutually agreed help of learning together, partners looked for the most suitable alternatives and made the most effective decisions on teaching, assessment, and improving individual student learning progress.The project target groups were students, teachers, schools administration, representatives of founders. In all countries (Lithuania, Portugal, and Spain) more than 50 percent of teachers, 100 percent of administration from schools partners, and 20 percent of students participated in the project activities, also more than 70 percent of staff from municipalities took part in the project activities.3 transnational learning, teaching, or training activities (workshops) were organized (1 workshop in each region – 2 live and 1 online), 3 project meetings (2 live and 1 online ) were held (1 project meeting in each region). To sum up, there were 63 mobilities. 20 lessons were organized in each region implementing the new teaching, learning, and evaluation methods of individual learning progress during the lessons. The intellectual product was presented during 3 virtual multiplying events.We constructed the project activities in such a way that new teaching/learning methods would not only be tested but also their impact would be analyzed. At the beginning of the project, schools in all three regions identified problematic areas for teaching mathematics and later observed changes in the progress and achievements of the students involved in the project. During the project, each school performed three diagnostic measurements, the results of which confirmed that the achievements of the students participating in the project lessons improved in all selected areas of mathematics teaching/learning.

The project aims to tackle early school leaving by the creation of a cross-sectoral network for sharing and transferring good practices. The main focus is on the prevention of early school leaving (ESL) of pupils from vulnerable groups. The partnership brings together players of a different type, civil society organization with new networking solutions, a national public body responsible for the educational integration of children from minorities, and training center with more than five decades of experience in training to the targeted groups of vulnerable students and migrant from the diverse socioeconomic backgrounds. in order to promote collection and exchange of knowledge and to improve practices involving different perspectives and knowledge, the project addresses the following priorities:- Developing new interactions that provide opportunities for access to disadvantaged, - Gather and redevelop creative and best practices aimed to remove obstacles within the school education system that may hinder young people from specific target groups in completing education. - Foster the professionalization of teachers and headteachers in the sphere of prevention of ESL of disadvantaged pupils and, above all, of the establishment of 'professional communities' from the involved teachers, pedagogical counselors and experts from the three partner organizations. The project will be a cross-institutional, interdisciplinary team that works on challenges over the longer term and try to devise solutions to the issues faced in their respective local schools in North Macedonia, Bulgaria, and Spain.- Support the large network of schools they work with to develop conducive and supportive learning environments that focus on the needs of individual pupils through developing adaptable, relevant, and engaging curricula and flexible education pathways.When elaborating on the project methodology we adopted the following approach: for each need that was identified corresponds an innovative feature of the project concept. 1. To develop a cross-sectoral platform of exchange of know-how and practices between partners with different initiatives in this area and of different backgrounds and missions, thus fostering a mutual enriching learning process. Corresponding innovative feature: the partnership includes an appropriate mix of complementary participating organizations with necessary profile and expertise that cover the whole chain of actors responsible for creating inclusive school strategies and ESL prevention models: national authority responsible for creating strategy and action plans on the national level – trainers of teachers that have the experience of delivering training for intercultural competence, leadership and innovative teaching methods to teachers in the different levels of school education and finally the directors, teachers and pedagogical advisors/counselors that work directly with the targeted pupils.2. To ensure access to a wide variety of consolidated comprehensive and cross-sectoral prevention and intervention models and strategies tailored to the specified target groups. Corresponding innovative feature: the project envisages not only the collection of best practices in the sphere but also their practical adaptation. A tangible result of the project will be the Inventory of good practices described in more detail in the following parts of the project. 3. To promote the “whole-school approach ” and the broader issue of engaging peers, school leaders, and family because of the potential impact of community on drop out measures. Corresponding innovative feature: The project proposes an approach for adapting the collected good practices in order to open up the school setting as the school cannot and must not address independently the broad range of social, economical and learning needs that affect the academic performance of pupils from vulnerable groups. Different flexible intervention methods will be promoted that can be adapted by individual schools and communities to build long-lasting commitment and collaboration from policymakers, society, family, and other stakeholders. An essential important step here will be to provide institutions' leaders with the essential content knowledge and materials necessary to develop successful school/community collaborations (reliable, flexible, adaptable and appealing awareness-raising and advocacy tools) 4. Continuous professional development and improvement of the competences of teachers and school management, advisors and counselors, need for school staff to gain a deeper understanding of ESL, enhance awareness on their own role in preventing it and to develop the skills to work with other professions and partners, in a “whole-school approach” (design, development, testing and sharing of specific training modules and support multimedia tools) There will be two levels of collection and adaptation of good practices to be included in the inventory.