CEPA Fernando Marrero Pulido-Arucas y Firgas

CEPA " Fernado Marrero Pulido- Arucas y Firgas is a small but vibrant adult education school where 5 teachers cater for approximately 150 students from the catchament area covering the minicipalities of Arucas and Firgas , in the north of Gran Canaria, Canary Islands, Spain. Most of our students are Spanish.
The school offers two educational paths:
1.- Basic education : Basic courses on linguistic , socila, scientific and technological competences. Students at this level are mainly advanced age women.
2.- The four courses of adults´secondary education to obtain the Secondary Education Certificate. Studenst at this level are mainly young adults who dropped out from their schools without any certification. There are also small groups of unemployed people, others in risk of socila exclusion and middle age students who retake their studies as a personal challenge or because of job related demands.
3.- Basic level ICT courses.
4.- Exams to obtain key competences certification at levels 2 and 3.
The teaching practise at our school has an intense social focus.
Asa result of our staff training projects in Europe, which have been carried out since 2016 in order to tackle the needs detected in our school, a number of measures in order to optimise all our ICT resourses were implemented. This allowed us to face the challenges posed by Covid 19 pandemic related ciscumstances successfully. Classroom sections for all blocks and groups had been created in " Classroom" in order to reach every single student. The idea behind this has been to create a system that would allow students who had to miss lessons for personal or work related issues to follow their blocks on line. All teachers working in adult education in our region, the Canary Islands, must be ICT accredited by the Canarian Education Authority. Training focused mainly on the use of social networks, mobile phones , tablets and other educational tools.
The school organizes a varied programme of extra curricular activities , such as workshops , study visits and talks, among others.
The school´s international vocation has been a priority since 2004: every year different types of projects are organized to allow students to get in touch with students from other parts of the world, through virtual platformas( ePals, BP Art Exchange, eTwinning, Flipgrid, Facebook) or through direct exchanges with other schools or institutions. Thus , an exchange of email messages and videos with the students and teachers of Wellsville High School, New York state, USA has been running steadily since 2004. There is also a close cooperation with Dr Valerie Oliver , from the UK, and the different organisations for which she works as a free lance teacher and artist. These projects included " Hidden Culture/ Escondidas Culture" with The Ark , and " Two scxhools , two cultures / Dos escuelas , dos culturas" with " Include/ Catch 22", both from the town of Bracknell, UK. These have allowed students in both countries to exchange artistic objects and share their experiences in Facebook.
The school has also coordinated two Grundtvig projects on the use of ICT in the development of European citinzenship( 2004- 2006) and on the use of the sense of humour to improve adult educationb( 2013- 2015) Apart from this, our school was also one of the partners in another project on the development of key competences in adult education(2009- 2011) We also coordinated an ARCE project on the same matter in collaboration with 5 other adult education schools from different Spanish regions.
We ahev also successfully developed three Erasmus+ KA104 projects since 2016:
" Facing the cahllenges of adult educations: strategies to reduce failure and early school leaving in a globalised world"( 2016- Rated as " Good practice" by the SEPIE - Spanish Education Internationalisation Office)
- " The international Outlook" ( 2017)
- " Non stop Internationalisation " ( 2018)
These two were rated as " Very Good" by the same institution.
- In this moment we are developing a new project called " Inclusion / Internationalisation: Cultural Heritage/ Art/ Literature", which will be running until August 2022.
We have also hosted 9 European students from universities of the UK, Greece andFinland, within the Erasmus+ Internship programme.
The school was selected by the Canarian Education Authority as an Ambassador for the Canarian Strategy for the Internationalisation of Education.
We have also received Erasmus + accrediation for the period 2021- 2027.