ERASMUS POLICY STATEMENT Signed 2024
IES CASTILLA is a public school located in Guadalajara, Spain. Our school was the first vocational training school in our city and incorporated middle and high school studies in the mid-nineties. In 2005 our school was selected to start implementing the dual British Council curriculum and we have been part of the program ever since, making sure students improve their language skills and the knowledge they have about other countries, cultures and values.
The Vocational training section of our school specializes in Intermediate and Higher vocational training programs in the fields of Installation and Maintenance and Mechanical Manufacturing with different higher-level courses including Mechanical Manufacturing Production Scheduling and Mechatronics. We also offer medium level courses such as Weld and industrial Boiler Manufacturing, Mechanizing, Electromechanical maintenance.
We have recently started offering our higher education courses studies in a bilingual program in order to improve our students’ opportunities of employability and professional development.
Due to this diverse offer and specialization, we receive students from all over the region from different cultural and socio- economic backgrounds making our school a diverse and multicultural institution.
We were part of the Erasmus project many years ago, but we lost the opportunity to renew the accreditation in 2021 since the person in charge retired. Looking forward, some new teachers have decided that acquiring the Eche-cert is a fundamental step to better the education we provide our students with.
In this context, joining the Erasmus+ program is the logical step to be taken in order to further our improvement as an educational institution since we are convinced that the internationalization of our programs is key for our teachers and students’ development as tolerant, respectful and open-minded citizens.
As future ECHE holders, we are fully committed to the core values and spirit of the Charter. We expect that being part of this program will inspire us to further foster equality and inclusion at our institution, especially for the most vulnerable groups. We will ensure that our students will be active citizens engaged with democratic values, and we will promote the UN agenda for SDG´s especially those referred to good education, to ensure inclusive and equitable education and to promote lifelong learning opportunities for students and teachers, and finally to achieve gender equality empowering women and girls through vocational training.
We will make sure we achieve these values by enhancing transparency and fairness in all processes and encouraging the development of the European identity.
We believe that Erasmus+ is a powerful tool for transformation and improvement. Joining the actions of the program will encourage both students and teachers to undertake positive changes, learn from others and improve our teaching/learning practices. Being part of Erasmus implies a permanent assessment of the quality of our procedures and the performance of our working methodology.
To accomplish our goals, we consider that the most suitable actions to achieve our goals are:
• Key Action KA 1 (learning mobility) and especially “The mobility of Higher Education students and staff” (KA103). For the 2024-2027 period, we would like to participate in Erasmus+ carrying out students’ mobilities for studying and training and staff mobilities for teaching and training.
• Also, we would like to be involved in future activities supported by Key Action KA2 (Cooperation among organizations and institutions) and particularly actions related to “Partnerships for Cooperation and Exchanges of practices». Our intention is to explore the possibilities offered by the etwinning platform to cooperate with other European Higher Institutions or enterprises in the development, transfer and implementation of good and innovative practices.
Strategy, objectives, and impact
To contribute to the Erasmus educational goals in our institution, by participating in this program we will try to:
- Better the quality of our H.E. courses by using new strategies and exchanging good practices and promoting European values to reduce inequalities.
- Promote project-based learning-teaching to build a sustainable future.
- Promote a holistic approach of education to contribute to educating students to shape the future of Europe.
- Support students to be prepared to shape the future affecting sustainability and green development.
- Increase the chances of our students improving their employability by providing them with a complete set of soft skills that will contribute to making them good professionals in their field.
- Promote international mobility for all students to do internships in companies abroad or student exchanges making sure this is accessible for them, regardless of their economic background.
- Promote teachers’ mobilities to observe good practices in other institutions and keep on receiving the necessary training to be up to date.
- Make our students aware of the necessity of a long-life learning attitude, highlighting the importance of the experiences gained with the mobilities.
- Make students and teachers active change makers of digital and green future.
- Improve foreign languages proficiency.
- Encourage entrepreneurship among our students as a way to create jobs and employability.
- Promote empathy and solidarity among students.
- Set up digital and environmentally friendly procedures at school.
- Contribute to build up the European values and identity by promoting tolerance and respect.
- Create solid relationships with other H.E. institutions and European companies.
- Support academic recognition of qualifications and training across Europe.
For the purpose of evaluating these impacts, we have to foresee control and monitor indicators, which can be quantitative or qualitative.
IES Castilla will monitor the data before, during and after the mobilities and actions carried out in the framework of Erasmus+.
- Our instruments to accomplish this task are:
- Keeping a thorough traceability register of the applications received for grants, by means of a listing that allows us to study the follow-up of the project throughout the duration of the project.
- By means of a numerical indicator with a scale from 0 to 10 we will process the mobility surveys carried out before and after the stays, the following are the key points to evaluate the acquired competences: self-confidence, inclusion, tolerance, quality, determination, curiosity and innovation.
- Assessment through OLS tests (online language support): the initial and final tests allow both the students and our institution to track improvements in foreign language proficiency.
- Monitoring questionnaires for the participants, our institution or company partners at the destination during the mobility, so that data can be analyzed to give us an overview of the learning progress of each student and the group.
- At the end of the project a final report will be made in order to assess the learning outcomes, so that it is recorded whether and to what extent each participant has achieved his or her expected learning outcomes in the learning agreement.
- Conducting and measuring satisfaction questionnaires based on the opinions of our students, so that we can identify the strengths and weaknesses of our project.
- Continuity evaluation by follow-up questionnaires to former participants after the end of the project. The two key aspects will be professionalism and employability, to be carried out every two times, six months apart.
- Evaluation of the diffusion of the Erasmus activities through the different social networks and our school website, through the number of comments and/or number of visits, as well as the repercussions in local media and the control of attendance to any event linked to the Erasmus+ actions will be taken into account.