We are a secondary school in a small town, called Martano, near Lecce in the southeast of Italy. With more than 750 hundred students (aged from 15 to 19) and almost 100 teachers (20 of them support students with special needs), the school started its operation, as independent structure in 1998. Almost 40% of our students live nearby, while the others commute from the neighbouring towns. Given that the school is divided in different sectors (Vocational for Social Services, Technical for Finance & Marketing, “Liceo Scientifico” and “Classico”), our pupils display a wide range of attitudes torwards formal education, from those who are highly motivated to those with learning difficulties or physical disabilities.

In some of our classes, there are some pupils with special needs, well integrated among their fellow students. They follow lessons as the other ones but at the same time, they participate in some activities, which provide scope for their creativity.

Our students have different backgrounds, some come from suburban or rural areas, some from single parent or pathological families, some from lower social status ones. Many of our students do not have any opportunity to go abroad (on holiday) either due to economic difficulties or because, living in a peripheral area, they are not used to a dynamic way of life. For this, it is very important for pupils in this rural community to begin to see themselves as citizens of tomorrow's Europe, and to start to consider Salento and Puglia in the wider context of diversity within a common European heritage.

We look forward to working with a range of partner schools in order to enhance lifelong learning skills that will contribute to pupils' employability in the increasingly mobile Europe of the 21st Century. Our school shows great attention to the European dimension meant as the development of active citizenship and as support for the integration processes and European unification.

In line with the objectives of the Europe 2020 Strategy, our school strives to promote the mobility of European citizens, to foster lifelong learning and the acquisition of transversal skills in order to raise the level of education and training of our students and increase competitiveness on the labour market.

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https://www.trinchesemartano.eu/pvw/app/LEII0008/pvw