SPAIN – CEIP Vil·la Ro­mana

CEIP Vil.la Ro­mana is a pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion­al in­sti­tu­tion, de­pend­ing on the Ed­u­ca­tion Coun­cil of the Va­len­cian Gov­ern­ment, which teach­es In­fant and Pri­ma­ry Ed­u­ca­tion since 2008/2009.

It is lo­cat­ed in Catar­ro­ja, a town of al­most 30.000 in­hab­i­tants in the South of Va­len­cia. On­ly 7 kilo­me­tres away from the Cap­i­tal city, the econ­o­my of the town is based on the in­dus­try, more specif­i­cal­ly on the fur­ni­ture in­dus­try. In the last decade, the town has suf­fered an in­crease on the pop­u­la­tion and so new neigh­bour­hoods have risen in the out­skirts of the old town. The school was built in one of these zones, where most of the in­hab­i­tants are pro­fes­sion­al work­ers. Al­though the town has been tra­di­tion­al­ly con­sid­ered to be Va­len­cian speak­er, this sit­u­a­tion has changed due to the af­flu­ence of new in­hab­i­tants.

This school has 29 teach­ers, 80% of which are cer­ti­fied with the B2 Cer­tifi­cate of En­glish, and around 470 stu­dents from 10 dif­fer­ent na­tion­al­i­ties. The school cur­rent­ly con­sists in 20 units of 25-30 stu­dents each, cov­er­ing ed­u­ca­tion from 3 to 12 years old. It de­vel­ops 2 main lin­guis­tic pro­grams. The first one is an Ex­per­i­men­tal Mul­ti­lin­gual Pro­gram, which is de­fined as a mul­ti­lin­gual ed­u­ca­tion­al mod­el that en­ables the si­mul­ta­ne­ous mas­tery of Va­len­cian, Span­ish and En­glish by the stu­dents, with the ul­ti­mate aim of im­prov­ing their com­mu­ni­ca­tion skills. This pro­gram is reg­u­lat­ed by the Or­der of 19th May 2009. As a re­sult, stu­dents re­ceive 80% of their train­ing and ed­u­ca­tion in En­glish, 10% in Span­ish and 10% in Va­len­cian lan­guage.

Apart from it, we al­so im­ple­ment a pro­gram where stu­dents learn all their sub­jects in Va­len­cian lan­guage, with the ex­cep­tion of Mu­sic, Art and P.E. that are taught in En­glish and Re­li­gion/Al­ter­na­tive Stud­ies and Span­ish Lit­er­a­cy that are taught in Span­ish lan­guage.

Among the pri­or­i­ties of the school, the in­ter­na­tion­al­i­sa­tion and the Eu­ro­pean di­men­sion in the stu­dents train­ing are high­light­ed, main­ly due to the mul­ti­lin­gual ex­per­i­men­tal pro­gramme im­ple­ment­ed in the school in which all sub­jects in In­fant and Pri­ma­ry Ed­u­ca­tion are taught in En­glish.

To achieve this aim, the school is cur­rent­ly de­vel­op­ing, among oth­ers, a mul­ti­lat­er­al as­so­ci­a­tion Come­nius pro­ject, where stu­dents work in co­op­er­a­tion with pupils from oth­er Eu­ro­pean coun­tries. This new pro­ject stands up for the teach­ers train­ing to achieve in­no­va­tion in our method­olo­gies and reach the ed­u­ca­tion aims of the Eu­ro­pean Union. The ex­pe­ri­ence abroad, apart from en­rich­ing us when shar­ing good prac­tices and en­abling the im­prove­ment of our for­eign lan­guage lev­el, will serve to im­prove the qual­i­ty in ed­u­ca­tion and to cre­ate re­la­tion­ships that will let us cre­ate job-shad­ow­ing and KA2 pro­jects in the fu­ture.

In ad­di­tion, the school has im­ple­ment­ed the us­age of a Eu­ro­pean Lan­guage Port­fo­lio which aim is to de­vel­op the learn­er’s abil­i­ty to as­sess his/her own com­pe­tence. Oth­er­wise, a pro­ject on spe­cial sup­port and as­sis­tance has start­ed up this aca­dem­ic year. It con­sists on giv­ing re­in­force­ment to those stu­dents who strag­gle more in their stud­ies, by teach­ing ex­tra class­es and giv­ing them tools to ap­ply when deal­ing with their aca­dem­ic tasks.