Project Description

The project “7th class”, which will be implemented by the PRONI Center for Social Teaching for 15 months (from July 1 2020 to September 30 2021), in cooperation with secondary schools in the City of Osijek, aims to empower the student for greater involvement in the creation of extracurricular activities in the school.

The curricular structure of secondary schools in the Republic of Croatia offers the possibility of introducing new, richer and complementary educational procedures, which in addition to compulsory teaching includes extracurricular activities.

These extracurricular activities are not compulsory as a rule, but they can be recognized as fulfilling obligations at school and have been shown to provide opportunities for growth and development, teamwork, improvement in school success, better adjustment of behavior and development of students’ skills and interests.

The school conducts these activities on a planned basis, taking into account the needs, interests, preferences and
developmental opportunities of students through the organization of extracurricular activities (through the school
curriculum), as well as through their substantive implementation at the class time.

The profession indicates that more successful development of the education curriculum is guaranteed by the active participation of both students and teachers in the design, and the knowledge acquired through joint planning and much more valuable than passively acquired knowledge. Therefore, there is space for the Student Council, as a legitimate and formal way of representing the student body and student participation, which by the statute has the capacity to make suggestions to the bodies of the School on issues relevant to students, their work and educational outcomes, to play a more important role in the whole process, in accordance with the interests and the needs of the students they represent.

Therefore, the specific objective of this project is to empower student councils to engage in dialogue with school representatives, to participate in the creation of extracurricular activities, their organization and implementation, on topics in line with the EU Youth Strategy and classroom hours, working with community stakeholders. As the headroom class is one compulsory hour per week performed by the high school classmate, and there is no prescribed official program for that hour, but the teacher has a great opportunity to choose which educational socializing content to implement at that hour and what methodical scenarios he will practice. here, too, it is possible for the class president (a member of the class department body), at most secondary schools in the city of Osijek, also a member of the Student Council, to take a more active role (along with the class he represents), or provide an opportunity for more engaged work of the Student Council.

In order to enable young people from Osijek , as EU citizens, to influence and shape their community in the coming years with their activities, following the direction of the current EU Youth Strategy, as a framework for creating extracurricular activities , discussions of young people and decision-makers will follow the areas of the 11 objectives of the EU Youth Strategy. During the preparatory phase, a questionnaire will be prepared and created regarding the contents that high school students consider important for inclusion in extracurricular activities and / or class hours, and an analysis of the content conducted by organizations (civilian and public) in the City of Osijek will be conducted. as extracurricular activities, they can be part of the school curriculum and curriculum for the haadroom class.

The project will involve at least 183 young people (members of the Student Council) and 78 decision-makers, 39
school representatives (teachers, principals, professional service representatives), and 39 stakeholder representatives (public and civic organizations from the City of Osijek) through 11 thematic related discussions with the objectives of the European Youth Strategy and through the holding of 3 meetings of the Working Group on the Brochure “7th class”.

As a result of the project, the brochure will serve as a guide to improve the organization of extracurricular activities in secondary schools and class hours in the Osijek area.

The project will enable students, together with decision-makers and community stakeholders, to help them recognize the value of educational content implemented by public and civic sector organizations in the City of Osijek, in dialogue with each other, to judge, propose, express opinions and new ideas and to examine the possibility of linking the curriculum of extracurricular activities with those of these stakeholders.

Co-funded by the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union