Schools of change

Goal

Sustainability is not only about the school environment, but also about the community involved in its decisions. Participatory budgeting is a way of deciding together with pupils how public money is spent. Pupils themselves propose ideas for the school, vote for the ones they like the most, and learn about citizenship in practice.

Desciption

For the Participatory Budgeting Challenge, schools receive partial funding for ideas proposed by pupils that are in line with sustainability principles. Selected schools are introduced to the principles of participatory budgeting and are advised on implementation by representatives of Transparency International Lithuania and Edu Vilnius.

Short training sessions and implementation advice are provided to first-time implementing schools. Schools that have already participated join in to share their experience and act as mentors. The implemented ideas are presented at a final event.

Achievements in 2023

Due to the high level of interest, as many as 33 schools in Vilnius have already tested the 2023 Participatory Budget.

Some of the ideas voted for by students:
- A home/project work space with a living corner
- Relax in the Dome - a project to furnish the dome with furniture for relaxation
- "Motivational notes on the stairs"
- silk-screen workshop
- cinema room in the school
- Chess board on the floor
- Musical instruments
- Storks Nest swing

29% of schools in Vilnius have already tested the Participatory Budget.

Contact

Project manager Donata Šablinienė
Donata.Sabliniene@vilnius.lt

Goal 

Sustainable development is a prerequisite for a sustainable future, and its principles need to be introduced from an early age. This is why we are increasingly focusing on sustainability projects in educational institutions in Vilnius, to provide them with a wide range of support to become more sustainable.

Description

This 40-academic-hour professional development programme aims to effectively integrate global sustainability themes into the educational process and sustainability attitudes into school life. The programme helps teachers to work successfully with updated general education curricula, where global and sustainable development themes are cross-curricular and integrated into all subject areas.

Achievements in 2023

Module I training took place in 2023 with 22 teachers participating.

Contact

Project manager Donata Šablinienė
Donata.Sabliniene@vilnius.lt

Goal 

To help educational institutions to become more sustainable organisations by providing funding or co-financing for the implementation of sustainable solutions in the educational institution.

Description

For the 2023 Ideas Challenge, we invited pre-schools and schools to submit ideas on how to increase sustainability in their community in areas such as movement, electricity, water, paper use, food waste, sorting, etc.

Funding or co-funding is available for ideas that encourage and/or enable school administrators, teachers, students and/or other community members to live more sustainably at school.

One application per school. If a school has departments, each department may submit an application.
In autumn 2024, we will again invite educational institutions to apply for funding for sustainability ideas.

Achievements in 2023

We received 80 applications, from which 21 ideas were selected for funding or co-funding.

Some of the winning ideas are: a bike shed, raised beds, a greenhouse, a food waste composter, insect hotels, LED lighting, a water station.

Contact

Project manager Donata Šablinienė
Donata.Sabliniene@vilnius.lt

Goal

Every organisation can improve its processes - and so can schools. We aim to foster faster progress and improve the quality of education in Vilnius City schools by inviting school teams to identify a problem area in the school and, with systematic support, work together to solve the challenge.

Description

Continuous Improvement is an offshoot of LEAN applied to the education system, which teaches how to monitor and analyse school processes to improve the quality of education and the social and emotional well-being of students. 

This methodology relies on the agreement and shared vision of the whole community and the daily collaboration of teachers. Daily tools are used to monitor individual and classroom progress, and to promote personal responsibility for learning outcomes.

Achievements in 2023

5 Vilnius schools are learning and implementing the Continuous Improvement Methodology, with distance learning sessions led by Marijke Broer, Klasse.Pro manager, an experienced education and Continuous Improvement Methodology expert from the Netherlands.

The two-year Vilnius Schools of Change project, in which most of the participants applied the Continuous Improvement methodology, ended in 2023.

Contact

Project manager Jurgita Rimkuvienė
Jurgita.Rimkuviene@vilnius.lt

Goal

Through our unique programme, we aim to unlock and develop students' and teachers' creativity, critical thinking and other key competences. We want to help schools to create a relevant, 21st century education process and provide practical support to address current learning challenges.

Description

The programme is unique in its methodology. It creates a space for partnerships between students, teachers and practitioners from different creative disciplines, working together to address specific learning challenges, and to develop and test educational approaches based on intergration, exploration and problem solving.

Working with:

- One class or target group of students, together with teachers and the programme developer;
- Teachers' Club - a space for teachers to come together and learn to tackle challenges together.

Benefits for the whole school - building a school culture based on trust, openness, reflection and purposeful improvement.

Achievements in 2023

6 schools in Vilnius City participated in the 2022-2023 programme.
67 teachers, 161 pupils and 1,644 school community members were involved in the programme. 36 organisations were involved in the implementation of school projects.

As of 2016, 24 schools in Vilnius City have participated in the programme.

Contact

Project manager Asta Morkūnienė
Asta.Morkuniene@vilnius.lt

Goal

We aim to create the right conditions for children with special educational needs and disabilities to attend the nearest school to where they live.

Description

From 1 September 2024, amendments to the Education Act will come into force, removing legal barriers to children with disabilities and special educational needs being able to learn together with everyone. Once the right conditions are in place, children with special educational needs and disabilities will be able to attend the nearest school to their place of residence, reducing the need for special schools.

We organise workshops and programmes to help educators prepare for this change.

Achievements in 2023

Together with lecturers from the Vilnius Educational Psychological Service and the Vilnius Special School Atgaja, we organised a series of seminars to strengthen teachers' competences in inclusive education for pre-school and general education teachers and teaching assistants in Vilnius.

This year:
- 5 distance workshops for pre-school and pre-primary teachers,
- 6 seminars for general education teachers,
- 2 programmes for assistant teachers.

826 teachers participated.

The lecturers shared their knowledge on how to help children with reading and writing difficulties, discussed how to prepare materials and tools for working with children with intellectual disabilities, how to strengthen pupils' social skills, and taught how to prepare and use alternative communication symbols, etc.

Contact

Project manager Andra Litvinaitė
Andra.Litvinaite@vilnius.lt

Vilnius participates in the national progress programme "Millennium Schools". Full details of the programme are available here.

Goals

The aim of the Programme is to create integral, optimal and high-quality education conditions in every municipality in Lithuania by 2030 to close the achievement gap.

Vilnius City has set three goals in its Millennium Schools Progress Plan:

1) To reduce the achievement gap between different schools in Vilnius City;
2) To enable the city's residents to choose the right educational institution for their place of residence and needs;
3) To facilitate the access of pupils with special educational needs to general-purpose classrooms/schools.

Description

The programme includes school improvement activities in four areas: leadership, inclusive education, STEAM and cultural education.

Leadership development includes activities such as a monitoring system for school community attitudes and satisfaction, data-driven action planning and quality improvement, a programme to attract new teachers, and others.

Inclusive education includes the physical adaptation of schools for children with different needs, the development of teachers' knowledge, skills and capacity to adapt the educational process, etc.

STEAM education focuses on setting up and improving science and games laboratories, Fablab workshops in the classroom and in non-formal activities, learning mathematics using digital tools, etc.

Cultural education focuses on language labs, collaboration with artists and art institutions, exploratory arts, media information literacy and other activities.

Participants

• Vilniaus „Žaros“ gimnazija;
• Vilniaus „Žiburio“ pradinė mokykla;
• Vilniaus darželis-mokykla „Vilija“;
• Vilniaus Karoliniškių gimnazija;
• Vilniaus Liepkalnio mokykla;
• Vilniaus Naujininkų progimnazija;
• Vilniaus Pilaitės gimnazija;
• Vilniaus Sausio 13-osios progimnazija;
• Vilniaus Sofijos Kovalevskajos progimnazija;
• Vilniaus šv. Kristoforo gimnazija.

Contact

Project manager Jurgita Rimkuvienė
Jurgita.Rimkuviene@vilnius.lt

The aim of the project "Meaningful Open Learning: school-community interaction" (MOST) is to bring together schools and communities (families, researchers, citizens, entrepreneurs, etc.) to address environmental challenges in the areas of waste management (in 2021) and energy saving (in 2022), and to find out how they can work towards finding the most appropriate solutions in their community.

Project activities:

During the project, schools are invited to implement school community project activities. The activities provide schools with the opportunity to consult with experts or researchers through the project partners in the country. In each project country, the schools that have implemented the project activities are invited to participate in a national event-fair, where they all present the results of their project activities.

MOST partners participate in a final conference to discuss the results of the school community project activities in the partner countries and to present the best examples.

The project is funded by Horizon 2020, the European Union's funding programme for research and innovation. The project is implemented by a consortium of 23 institutions from 10 European countries. The project is coordinated by the Fraiburg University of Educational Sciences, and the project partners in Lithuania are Vilnius University and the Vilnius City Municipality Administration (implemented by EDU Vilnius).

Between 2022 and 2023, 26 school teams carried out energy saving project activities. The best examples was presented at the final conference in the Netherlands.

Head of planning and implementation of school and community projects (EN)

Project Advisory Board in Lithuania:

Dr. Saulius Maskeliūnas, Lietuvos kompiuterininkų sąjunga (https://www.liks.lt/)
Arminas Varanauskas, Žinių ekonomikos forumas (http://www.zef.lt/)
Daiva Viskontienė,  UAB „Biznio mašinų kompanija“ (https://bmk.lt/)
Girėnė Ščiukaitė, Bentley Systems filialas Lietuvoje (http://www.bentley.com)
Rigonda Skorulskienė, Kauno jėzuitų gimnazija (https://kjg.edupage.org/)

Project representative on the project's European Advisory Board:
Marytė Skakauskienė 

Contacts

Vilnius university: Eglė Jasutė,  Egle.jasute@fsf.vu.lt  
"Edu Vilnius": Rūta Mazgelytė,  ruta.mazgelyte@vilnius.lt

Read more about the project: Vilniaus universiteto sveitainėje.
Official MOST website: MOST svetainė.