Ekonomska i trgovacka skola /Croatia

Ekonomska i trgovačka škola is a vocational school with about 550 students and about 70 teachers. Our students study four years to get education for jobs in business and commerce (administrative worker and sales representative), for jobs in the hotel and tourism industry and we have an experimental course of grammar school combined with economics subjects. There is a three-year programme that qualifies students for the job of a shop assistant. Recently a three-year course for students with special education needs - administrator aid has been introduced. The school is situated in Čakovec, a town of 20,000 inhabitants in the northwest of Croatia. The teachers in our school constantly encourage students to participate in various projects, competitions and fairs. The school is nationally recognized as a school which provides quality education as our students have won many state competitions, such as Young Entrepreneur, Hotel and Tourism competition, German language competitions and English

- different international projects and partnerships as listed below;

- perpetual school projects (project days are organized once or twice a year for the entire school with different topics such as the environment, digital skills, etc.);

- student cooperative Terra Economica produces natural cosmetics from plants grown in the school's scented garden and makes ornaments for different holidays and events. The cooperative's marketing department promotes the project on social media, school's webpage as well as at fairs and manifestations.

- Foreign languages department organizes workshops for students during the project days and school open house days. Members of the department are constantly educated in the field of Web 2.0 tools.

Most students come from rural areas and nearby villages and the minority live in Čakovec. In the last few years we have had an increase in the number of the minority Roma students enrolled in the school. The school has been putting extra emphasis on the inclusion of the minorities (Roma) and special education needs students. Even though the students achieve good academic results, most of them never get a chance to gain cross-cultural experience of learning abroad and sharing experiences with students from other European countries.We have 14-18 year old students with very different socio-economic backgrounds and abilities.In addition to that, some students are disadvantaged because of their difficult family, social, or economic circumstances.Many of those experience additional issues when it comes to using IT either at school or at home. They simply do not have their own laptops/computers or even mobile phones and/or do not know how to use them.