School-age refugees and especially unaccompanied minors consist a population that moves between European member states before their final settlement. This situation creates two significant needs:

First, to ensure that young refugees have a meaningful and rewarding educational encounter with the European way of life, in the sense of what EU President von der Leyen recently described as her vision for a Union of equality, tolerance and social fairness, and the founding values of a united Europe. Such an education, would involve the development of several literacies. It cannot be adequately provided in the difficult conditions of the Reception and Identification Centers, but has to be ensured once these people have been placed under international protection status. Providing refugee children and adolescents with an education that introduces them to European values and the “European way of life” within a structured schooling process, which would maintain and valorize students linguistic and cultural capital, will promote their wellbeing and the wellbeing of their families. It will make them aware of the European context, their rights and obligations, and the main features and attributes of European societies which in several cases differ significantly from their national, ethnic and cultural background.

The provision of this educational orientation to newcomers from various linguistic and cultural backgrounds, creates the need for the development of an effective curriculum, and the professional development of educators in order to teach them the European values through/via school courses, adopting existing resources and/ or valorizing their own as well as student’s educational, linguistic and cultural repertoires using teaching strategies which would actively engage refugee students, many of which have never attended school or have been away from school for a long time, usually years.

Second, given the fact that in most cases the borderline Member State which was the refugee point of entry to the EU will not be the place of their final settlement, there is the need to ensure a degree of continuity in content and form of the education services provided and to facilitate their educational integration.

The project builds on these ideas and aims at creating a partnership, a. taking into account the present condition of refugee children and adolescents from the Reception areas to the places of “permanent” settlement, b. study best practices for the above-mentioned issues, c. develop a needs-based curriculum and an in-service training program and implement it in schools and education institutions of participant organizations, d. taking into consideration the local conditions and aiming at maximizing the European value along with refugees linguistic and cultural background of such interventions.

The stock-taking and needs analysis reports, the development of the curriculum and the concomitant teacher training program and the training material reflect existing best practices, respond to local needs and schooling conditions, and will be properly piloted in order to ensure that it serves reliably and validly the targeted groups.

The partnership will ensure the widest dissemination possible, with the use of a digital platform and through multiplier events, with the aim to create a linguistically and culturally sensitive educational space in order to actively and effectively address similar situations and would opt for a coordinated effort to ensure continuity of best practices and new ideas based on the research.