Italy

LIZEO “FILZI”, ROVERETO1. Our school

LICEO “FILZI “ is located in the centre of Rovereto, a town of 40.000 inhabitants, the second largest town in Trentino, a region in the north of Italy at the southern edge of the Italian Alps, near the Dolomites.

Filzi is an upper secondary school which offers two programmes of 5 years of study each: one is centred on Human Sciences and the other on  Social-Economic Sciences, with a marked interest for the reading and understanding of social-economic events and aspects of our contemporary world, all in a European dimension. Besides subjects common to all secondary schools, there are subjects like Law and Political Economy. Psychology, Sociology, Anthropology, Methodology of Research.

• Number of students: 545 students  (in the two programmes)
• Number of staff: 65 teachers and 22 support staff

Quality system used: the quality of the offered programmes is determined by the results of State exams at the end of the 5 years and by the fact that most students continue their studies at university.

Every educational institution in our region undergoes an internal and external evaluation monitored by the regional Evaluation Committee. School administration regularly carries out internal research and surveys.

Students learning is evaluated and graded every year in the national tests called INVALSI and we participate in Ocse-Pisa research, too.

2. Entrepreneurship at our school

The main objective of the social-economics focused course is the development of  entrepreneurship as a fundamental skill for the  students. It’s not a subject by itself, but it’s a cross-curricular activity in the last three years of study.

In order to give students the opportunity to get practical work experience with internships we’ve been collaborating for many years with the Trentino Federation of Cooperation, which operates in our region and is a key institution for the economy of our area. Cooperation has become part of the curriculum and of the job-shadowing experience the students have over the school years. At the end of the course of study the Federation certifies our students’ competences in this field.

In the first two years experts from the Cooperative Education (Educacoop)  give students a general knowledge of the cooperative values and principles and help them to set up a school cooperative with which students experiment with and acquire basic entrepreneurial skills which will be developed in the final three years in the activity of shadowing/internship.

Students are, in fact, required to do 200 hours of internship in  local cooperatives or companies and they are educated in the sector of entrepreneurship. In the third year their task is to observe and analyze the organizations they are sent to (credit, social, consumer and agricultural cooperatives) by watching the various activities in the company or institution and by studying the organogram of the employees.

The following year they have to carry out a task playing an active role in the field of human resource management to find solutions to the different problems they have to deal with in their working day.

In the school year 2014-2015 the school took  part in a project promoted by the University of Economics of Trento called “Entrepreneurship Education” in collaboration with IPRASE (Institute of research and experimentation of  the province Trento).

The students of the final three years are educated to have an entrepreneurial attitude which leads them to the presentation of their personal project work at the State exam. They follow a specific method divided into different steps:

• start-up idea focused on creativity
• business modeling
• learning validation
• public speaking

At the end of the course they take part in a competition organized by Start Lab in Trento, a special contest between secondary schools within the Festival of Economics (an important national event held in Trento every year with lectures delivered by nationally and internationally renowned economists). In 2015 one of our students won the competition presenting her own start-up. Project works are presented and evaluated at the final exam for the diploma.

Business partners we usually work with:  Trentino Federation of cooperation is made up of 500 companies operating in all productive sectors all over the province of Trento and gives us opportunities for student internships as well as support in project planning.

3. Our experience with international projects

We’ve been organizing student exchange programmes with Gymnasium n. 3 in Riga, Latvia for more than 10 years. However this is the first time we’ve taken part in an  Erasmus+ project and we are very enthusiastic about it

4. Our participating in this project

Who: two classes of the social-economics focused course (3^LEA and 3^LEB) are participating in the project. The students (…. girls and … boys) are all 17 years old. The students are chosen for each mobility after a selection based on school results and an interview assessing their motivation and cooperative skills.

What activities: we are in charge of all the written student Evaluations as well as the evaluations from teachers and associated partners and other stakeholders. We are also responsible for the discussed evaluation of the project.

After each mobility the students are asked to present their experience with the innovation camp abroad to the rest of the class and their teachers.

We’re holding the Innovation Camp in Rovereto  in March 2020.

5. Contact information:

• Our webpage: https://www.liceofilzi.it
• Our facebook account: https://www.facebook.com/liceofilzi