Ignazio Buttitta School is situated in an economically disadvantaged suburb of Bagheria, a town just a few kilometres from Palermo. It consists of three buildings: 31 classrooms (with interactive whiteboards, computers with Wifi connection, and tablets )two gyms, two computer labs, a multi-media lab, a Science lab, an Art lab and a meeting room, two offices, a room for the headmistress and a teacher room. The pupils enrolled are 622: 100 children attend kindergarten, 117 pupils attend elementary school and 445 attend middle school. The 4% over 625 pupils are not motivated and do not attend school regularly as a consequence their results are not satisfying and are at risk of social exclusion. Students with learning difficulties are included in the classrooms and have their own support teachers. Our students live in a poor economic, cultural and social environment where access to culture is significantly limited or absent. Their parents are mostly uneducated, and unemployed, some are part-time/seasonal workers and do not care much about their children's education. They often rely on the school their children's education have no positive models to inspire them, and often come to episodes of deviance. As a result, some students abandon school earlier. In this context, our school plays the role of an essential educational, training and aggregation agency able to activate actions and paths of adequate value to recover and contrast hidden problematic situations and relational hardships. The school arranges afternoon classes and clubs aiming to strengthen the basic skills of students in order to compensate the disadvantages of their cultural, economic and social background and reduce the phenomenon of school dropouts. The teachers propose activities through innovative approaches which put the student at the center of the learning process and enhance their learning style and their spirit of initiative to deal with effectively.
The goal is above all to strengthen the skills of communication in the mother tongue, in foreign languages and in science and maths. The school has started a process of integration of non-EU immigrants for years and this has led to the realization of initiatives of welcome, social and educational, cultural exchange and socialization among people of different nationalities. Since 1999 the school has been running European projects as coordinator and partner ( Comenius, Individual Pupil Mobility, eTwinning projects, PON and Erasmus+ projects) involving teachers, pupils and parents in activities carried out together with other EU countries. This has proved to be useful both for the students who have had the opportunity to get to know other realities and appreciate the "knowledge" and for the teachers themselves who have met colleagues of different nationalities within the EU and have gained a broader understanding of practices, policies and systems of education of different countries. You can find additional information on our website: icsbuttitta.edu.it
