The University of Cadiz participated in the kick-off meeting of the ACTIVE CITIZEN COMPAS project in Leeuwarden, The Netherlands, from 26 to 28 January 2024.

The meeting was attended by  Asunción Aragón Varo and Rafael Galán Moya, lecturers from the Department of French and English Philology of the Faculty of Philosophy and Arts.

This is a project of the Erasmus + – Partnerships for Cooperation in School Education programme. The universities participating in this project are, in addition to the University of Cadiz, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Universiteit Utrecht, Univerzita Palackého v Olomouci, Izmir Ekonomi Universitesi, together with six secondary schools, which in our case corresponds to the I.E.S. Fernando Quiñones of Chiclana.

The aim of this project is to promote Active Citizenship (AC) in secondary schools and to prepare students for active citizenship in Europe. To achieve this goal, the consortium will work on raising awareness of students and teachers about Active Citizenship in Education (ACE). To this end, it will create an Active Citizenship Compass (ACB), design and implement learning activities on AC and develop school policies on Active Citizenship as an excellent practice.

The activities that will contribute to achieve the project objectives include: research on the current situation on ACE in the partner countries, the creation of ACC, a digital tool that will assess the competences and knowledge level of students, the training of teachers on how to design and implement learning activities and tools on ACE and consequently the training of their students.

The partners will develop and monitor school policies on Active Citizenship. It is expected that, after the implementation of the project, students will have developed competences and attitudes to actively exercise their citizenship in Europe. Teachers and staff of the schools involved will be aware of the concept of CA, having the necessary skills to train and guide their students on Active Citizenship, both now and in the future.

Eventually, schools will be able to adapt a dynamic Active Citizenship policy which will be regularly reviewed and evaluated.