Project to Help Pupils Abroad with First Language Skills

Teachers, Parents, and Pupils asked to support PUMO in Developing unique Online Courses and Teacher’s Training through Seminars and Survey

The PUMO Project has set out to address the education of pupils living away from their home countries in situations where there are no schools in their first language. PUMO intends to develop a series of online courses to support learning progress in subject areas specific to their countries of origin – this includes language skills, but also other subjects not necessarily addressed by the schools in their country of habitation. The potential educational disadvantages of mobility due to, for example, parents’ employment are thereby to be minimized through a detailed training programme for interested teachers and technology-enhanced support in the form of online educational resources (courses). In order to ensure this training and support programme successfully approach the needs of both mobile pupils and the teachers who help them, the PUMO Project is conducting a series of questionnaires and introductory seminars for teachers, parents, and representatives of the state educational systems to describe the state-of-the-art, to identify the needs and requirements, and further to help teachers to integrate and use these online courses.

The PUMO Consortium has already organized successful seminars in the partner countries of Estonia, Greece, Latvia, Lithuania, and Sweden in order to present the project’s aims and receive feedback regarding project subject matter. A series of personal interviews will take the place of an introductory seminar in Germany and will be held in June – Primary and secondary school teachers, representatives of the state education system, and involved parents are invited to participate. These interviews will be held per telephone or via Skype (with or without video accompaniment as desired). Parent organisations are especially welcome, as their intimate familiarity with the situation of their children and subject matter in their countries of origin are of special relevance for PUMO. The introductory interviews will address the identification of the current educational situation of the emigrant population in the country, the support of distance-based language and culture courses, and the best composition of the teachers’ training programme.

Both the German introductory interviews and the other completed seminars are complemented by an on-going online survey for all target groups of the project. PUMO thereby invites all interested individuals to submit their opinions through the following multilingual links:

• For state representatives of school systems:
http://www.unipark.de/uc/PUMO/Questionnaire_for_GQ
• For parents of mobile pupils:
http://www.unipark.de/uc/PUMO/Questionnaire_for_Parents
• For pupils in primary education:
http://www.unipark.de/uc/PUMO/Questionnaire_for_pupils_PE
• For pupils in secondary education:
http://www.unipark.de/uc/PUMO/Questionnaire_for_pupils_SE
• For teachers:
http://www.unipark.de/uc/PUMO/Questionnaire_for_Teachers

PUMO appreciates your insight and desire to support pupils on the move. For more information on the PUMO Project, please visit the project website at www.pumo.info.

About the European project PUMO:

PUMO is the European COMENIUS project for the development of a course for teachers to equip them to support, using e-learning, pupils who have temporarily left their school to be with their parents in other countries. It will focus on fostering their knowledge of their mother tongue and “homeland specific” subjects.

The aim of the project is to create a system to enable pupils away from their home country to maintain their progress in subject areas specific to their countries of origin, as well as to monitor their progress in other subjects, to ensure that they can re-integrate with their original cohort when they return home. As part of the system, PUMO will provide a unique teacher training programme to help teachers to support pupils who have left their classes and are living and studying in a different culture and language.

The PUMO course will equip teachers with the necessary skills, attitudes and knowledge to assist students develop their knowledge of the culture and language of their ‘home’ countries alongside the education that they are receiving abroad. This will assist the pupils to develop into active citizens both at home and abroad.

More information about PUMO is available online at www.pumo.info

PUMO Contact:

Mr Guntars Jirgensons
Riga City Council Education, Culture and Sports Department
K. Valdemara, 5
Riga LV-1010 Latvia
+371 67395842
Guntars.Jirgensons@inbox.lv

This release was published on openPR.