IES ALBAL is a state secondary and Sixth Form College (science and social science and humanities) and vocational training school (electronics and electricity / Robotics) placed in the metropolitan area of Valencia city (Spain).
The school started in 2004 with 400 pupils and 60 teachers and has grown in a considerable way in the last 9 years; among other reasons, because of the implementation of a multilingual programme and the development of different European Programmes.
Presently, it consists of 102 teachers and 1032 students. We should point out that the vast majority of our students are doing ‘ESO’ (compulsory secondary education) where we have 27 units, which means that a high percentage of our students are between 12 and 16 years old. This fact causes very specific difficulties, which need the implementation of a number of measures for diversity outreach and problem solving methodologies and techniques.
The main characteristics of our centre can be summarized as:
– Being a centre that promotes inclusive and equitable education which lets all our students find their place at our school and be able to grow up physically, intellectually and emotionally as human beings, no matter what their abilities or interests might be.
– Getting to be an innovative and high quality school; that’s to say, a centre where our students get good academic training that will let them continue their working and personal life successfully.
– Being a multilingual centre that promotes foreign languages learning and multilingual diversity. Taking into account that learning languages is a very useful tool for our students to face the demands of the contemporary world, we have designed our multilingual programme that bets for a methodology in foreign language teaching inside a programme for the learning of our autochthonous language (Valencian).
We have also combined it with the development of different European programmes: three Comenius Projects, two KA1 Erasmus+ Projects and two KA2 Erasmus+ Projects. We are currently developing ‘Responsible Students, Responsible Citizens’ (KA2 Erasmus+ Project) and also are taking part in a KA3 ACT Project led by Spanish Ministry of Education.
In the last years, we have also received foreign students from different countries: Slovakia, Finland, Norway and Hungary, within an international programme. These students carry out their studies at our school for one school year.
From its very beginning, IES Albal has tried to give an answer to students’ needs to combat school failure by implementing different programmes: School Accompaniment in 1st, 2nd and 3rd of ESO, Small Group and Reinforcement Classrooms in 1st and 2nd of ESO, INTEGRA PROGRAMME for students with behavioural issues and with a high risk of school abandonment, Learning and Performance Improvement Programme for 3rd ESO, Reinforcement Programme for 4th ESO, Follow-up Classroom, Pygmalion Programme (tutoring among peers), Personal-Tutoring Programme and programmes to improve school atmosphere.
Teachers have always participated in training courses to be more efficient and innovative. This training is basically centred in conflict solving, prevention of school bullying, mediation techniques, CLIL methodology, classroom management, ITC and foreign language learning.
