Project Summary
The Knowledge Exchange Program for the Adriatic School System (KEPASS) is a project aimed at promoting undergraduates’ mobility at the secondary school level, responding to the growing need of a challenging and high quality education system from young students and their parents.
This is why the main goal of this program is to give students, aged 17 or 18, the opportunity to attend, for a few months, a foreign school in another Adriatic country, stressing how every education system should emphasize the following aspects:
1. Challenge students to accept social and cultural changes, constantly growing in a more globalized environment, throughout the exposure to other cultures.
2. Allow students to broader their possibilities in terms of universities’ choices.
3. Empower students to be more competitive in the global labour market.
4. Learn though the experience and get to know languages and cultures of other Adriatic countries.
The KEPASS program is a great opportunity for students.
During the three months abroad they will be exposed to different cultures and languages; they will experience new teaching approaches and curricula; and they will be involved in various extra-curricular activities. The transformational effect will be incredible in terms of self-development, flexibility, intercultural competences, new skills and languages acquired. The students will be able to overcome ethnic prejudices and they will gain the ability to operate in different labour markets.
Although mainly addressed to students, the KEPASS projects has to involve schools first: in fact, in order to participate in the program, thus sending and receiving students on mobility, a secondary school needs to be “accredited” within the KEPASS system. Accreditation means developing an educational offer which must be a real added value to international students: it means that every school must be able to offer “international modules”, languages, interesting afternoon activities, tutorship to students and mutual recognition of the competences acquired during the mobility period. All the “accredited” schools, together with the institutional partners of the project, will create the skeleton of an Adriatic school system, which will allow a continuous mobility of students, but which will also have to work to grant the 
mutual recognition of the skills acquired during the period abroad. The pilot group of schools applying for accreditation within the KEPASS program will be assisted in their upgrading efforts by experienced tutors nominated by the project partners. Their principals and teachers will participate in training sessions and workshops during which the schools will develop new “international modules”, tested during the first mobility phase and introduced in every KEPASS school if proved successful.
A system to assess the competences acquired by students during mobility and to mutually recognize vocational diplomas in specific sectors of interest will be established. Consequently, these tools will be potentially extended to a more comprehensive mutual recognition of school credits and diplomas in the Adriatic region. Though all the activities the KEPASS project aims at developing a more integrated Adriatic school system, offering cross cultural and multilingual experiences, rooted in the quality local tradition but open to international European contents and qualifications and able to give mutually recognized qualifications and diplomas.