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Our Origins

Bosses or Dossers

During the Great British Industrial Revolution two hundred years ago, most of society moved away from rural farms to the big smoky cities to get rich in the new factories. The powers that were desired to make these factories as productive as possible. Their greatest obstacle was having to waste time and money teaching their staff what to do. Under pressure from entrepreneurs of the day, they began to fashion schools like the assembly lines in factories. A child would enter at five years old and be grouped according to age. Eventually at the age of ten the child would have been moulded into an educated worker. This pattern has remained to this day.

Erasmus

But has our education system evolved sufficiently to match the rapidly changing industry of the internet economy, which has exploded in the last decade? Rather than waiting for an answer, education centres like St. Ciaran’s Community School in Kells, Zespół Szkół Ekonomicznych Nr 1 in Krakow, Poland and IIs Fermi-Galilei in Italy have simply taken action. The three schools are collaborating in an Erasmus project which involves setting up a business to provide a rich learning experience for their students. The Erasmus Programme was set up by the European Union in 1987 to assist students from all over the continent travel to new countries, form alliances and enhance their employment prospects. Thanks to this Programme, during the next two years 36 students from St. Ciarán’s will get the opportunity to visit the partner schools in Poland and Italy.

Ireland Meets Poland

St. Ciaran’s Community School teacher, Brianan Fox was working on an eTwinning project with her transition year students in 2014, when she was contacted by Malgorzata Florczyk, an experienced Erasmus co-ordinator, from Krakow. Malgorzata invited Brianan to partake in lecturing each other’s students on the process of setting up a business. Brianan suggested that the two sets of students actually set up businesses and trade with each other, inter school.

Presentation

In November the students from St. Ciarán’s astounded visiting teachers from Poland and Italy with a very professional presentation of their experience of setting up a company. Malgorzata and her Colleagues from Italy and Poland Visited Kells in October 2015, and asked the students to present their business.

The day of the presentation the students unveiled their enterprise as if they were in a conference room looking out across the New York skyline. They displayed advertising strategies, SWOT analysis and even a projected two year income. Upon completion, silence fell over the assembly.

The students assumed the worst until it dawned on them that the silence was from amazement, the Polish and Italian teachers were astounded. This amazement grew into a slow clap. Malgorzata stood up and proclaimed inspiration at the competencies the Irish students displayed and the brilliant opportunity that had been forged for the 108 students involved from the three countries. She Said: “Hopefully, our project will be a prelude to a long-lasting cooperation between the three schools. Business, learning and sightseeing is not enough. It’s people that make the difference. Its people that make it count… “

Challenges

They found themselves running a business, searching for suppliers whose products they could sell to these “overseas markets” and even dealing with banks. They hunted out local suppliers and told them they had gained access to exclusive foreign markets. One of the biggest obstacles encountered by the students was finding suppliers who would take a group of students seriously. Highlighting a huge problem with our education system: Students are considered irresponsible and naive by virtue of them attending school, when really it should be the polar opposite. Despite this the students persisted and using the resources on the internet the project came to life

Kells Students Journey

The Kells representatives began working with an Italian school on the project last year, trading in products from each other’s local area. The students from both schools were introduced to each other via Skype, given few instructions and told they need to find out for themselves how to set up the business. It seemed like a good idea as it was a little more exciting than theory classes but the real motivation began when the students realised they could even make some money doing schoolwork.

They began by setting up a website and getting familiar with internet marketing, developing marketing plans and they even produced a product in the form of a multilingual Kells tourism mobile phone app.