Escola Secundária do Entroncamento

We are a secondary school situated in the centre of Portugal, 120km far from Lisbon (our capital) with strong road and rail accessibility. Due to the recent government policies we grouped with other schools and formed the "Agrupamento de Escolas Cidade do Entroncamento" made up of six schools.

Therefore the projects we are involved in and will be involved in have the participation of a wide range of students with different ages and attending different grades. We are used to doing the horizontal and vertical articulation of studies (among years of studies, all the students who attend year 8 for example  work together in projects, and among cycles of studies, students who attend the preparatory school and students who attend the secondary school get involved in the same projects). The school which applies for this project has 1300 students, but the grouping of schools has 2723 students.

We are situated in an urban area with a population working mainly in the services sector. Most of these workers travel daily to Lisbon to work there. Due to the deep economic crisis the country is going through, there is a high percentage of unemployed people with strong effects at school life (students are having problems of malnutrition, students don't have money to buy their books and other schoolstuff, there is a lack of motivation to keep on studying, students tend to present disruptive behaviour). Just a few students present high expectations concerning their future life, having intentions to continue their studies in the university or other institutions of Higher Education. We also have vocational courses aiming to qualify students for the job market, integrating them and thus trying to decrease the risk of exclusion. There has been an increase in the number of students from different countries because of migration( students from our former colonies like Angola, Mozambique that lived in Lisbon moved to our town since we can offer better and less expensive  living conditions), and immigration (from China, Eastern European countries, Brazil). We are a reference school for the blind students and have a group of teachers who work with students with other specific needs like autism.

The school has a group of qualified and stable teachers. There are some extracurricular activities like clubs that aim at involving the students in a variety of activities trying to turn the curriculum meaningful to students and building bridges to real life.

It is worth mentioning the numerous projects developed by the school, both nationally and internationally. The number of prizes won has increased, which is indicative of the improvement of project quality. The school has a Scientix Ambassador who actively participates in European Schoolnet pilot projects in Brussels.