The school is placed in Arévalo, a small town in the south of Castilla y León that is one of the central regions of Spain (near Madrid). Arévalo has got 8600 inhabitants.
The school has got 376 students aged 3 to 12. Most of our students live in Arévalo with their families, but some of them, who live in the villages around Arévalo, come to school by bus. The school has 5 lines of buses that pick the students up in their villages.
CEIP Los Arévacos was founded in 1978 and it is a bilingual school since 2007/08. At the moment it has 3 main guidelines to work on:
- Bilingualism: we have more English lessons in Infant Education and we teach Science and Arts and Crafts in English from the first course of primary education. We try to get involved in every project having to do with improving English skills in our students. For example, last year we participated in a Quality Experience whose title was "English as the common language in sport events". We worked on this topic all the school year and we got a price for the innovative proposal. The school has a large number of prizes in regional school competitions realted not only to bilingualism but to one of the other main guidelines..
Almost every year we have conversation assistants in class from different countries (EE.UU. Australia, Great Britain...).
- New Technologies: the school has also the highest rate in TIC development that schools can get in Castilla y León. All our classes have digital screens, every teacher has a computer in the class and the communication among the educational community is usually established through an interactive platform to upload test marks of students, set interviews with families...
We are also developing an interacitve library made by students. Children can listen to the summary of the book they are consulting in Spanish and in English.
- Handicapped students education: from the beginning CEIP Los Arévacos was considered what we used to call in Spain an integration school. Most students with special needs in the area came to our school. Nowadays, apart from the attention to students with special needs, we also have 2 classes for handicapped children with special teachers, assistants and physiotherapist.