Schools Integrating Circular Economy through the Collaboration of Educational and Industry Stakeholders

We have seen a great rise in the need to embed Circular Economy into today's society. This project embeds to main challenges which were fully approached: How can we save the environment and maintain a sustainable economy at the same time. Through CESchools, we have used the ultimate principles of Circular Economy "reduce-reuse-recycle" and applied it to a larger scale, making it so students are pioneers in their classrooms and in their lives. Since the proposal, nothing has really changed regarding our approach: For the realization of these principles, there were many important players in our society, including our schools. Schools represent an area of particular interest for circular economy (CE) implementation due to their socio-economic relevance for the service sector and their influential role in supporting sustainable development in cities and regions worldwide.Schools contributed to economic progress and social well-being through knowledge creation and dissemination (research and teaching) and community development (outreach activities).

CESchools showed how schools could be a major player in promoting circular economy approaches by engaging their students to be their speakers in raising awareness in our society. We demonstrated how human resources and initiatives were very important in embracing CE in each country. The project has provided solutions to one of the biggest challenges the EU (and the world) is still facing: promoting a Circular Economy mentality and helping it seep into institutions and society to generate real change. At a smaller scale, industries and educational institutions could boost this shift towards integrating CE in all areas of society. Specifically, this project has provided: (1) Tangible, durable results: Created collaborations between educational centers and private institutions. (2) Long-term impact: Promoted and encouraged CE thinking among schools; that is, "planted the seed" for future generations who would grow and adapt their habits to ultimately create the biggest expected impact. (3) Long-lasting outcomes: Developed new and innovative hidden curriculum techniques which has been and could be used by other countries, not just the ones that participated in this consortium.

During the project: -Project Result 1: A report analysis of CE thinking in Schools. This included previous focus groups, interviews, and meetings with major stakeholders to gather quantitative and qualitative data, designed to help the main target groups. This practical information helped bring value to adopting CE thinking and increased awareness. This outcome engaged all the target groups throughout the project, and each partner was in charge of implementing and creating network collaborations with their respective stakeholders in the way they saw fit. -Project Result 2: CE Thinking in Hidden Curriculum Development. This outcome was designed to demonstrate how public and private schools could play a key role in helping promote circular economy approaches by encouraging and engaging their students. In addition, each partner has deeply explored how the development of a CE mentality in training human resources outside of the curriculum will be important for circular economy approaches in industry. During the elaboration of this and the testing, we saw how useful it is to provide training on "hidden curriculums" and the importance to bring awareness in schools through the trainers, trickles down to the students. All insights and findings were translated into videos which are available resources on the OER. -Partner Meetings. These were both online (every month) and on-site (every 6 months). They helped maintain a good flow of communication and guaranteed that the deliverables were carried out progressively, on time, and under our expected quality standards. -Learning, Teaching (Testing), Training Activity. This provided solid feedback with trainers before going to schools and letting the student-led activities run their course. With the expertise of teachers who knew the behaviors and context of schools, we could perfect our outputs and make them more flexible to increase their duplicability. -An intense dissemination strategy was deployed at the regional/national level to reach relevant stakeholders working with local and regional participants and beneficiaries in the industry. At a local level, the trainers who piloted the resources developed in output 2 and the training OER platform continued their work within SMEs, beneficiaries, participant organizations, and other relevant stakeholders. After the completion of the project: We have prepared a sustainability plan (see Annex) where all partners included ways in which they plan to incorporate what we have developed throughout the project after its completion.

The main project's results were: 1.Created an Overarching Analysis of CE Thinking in partner countries & suggestions for the Hidden Curriculum, which included all main stakeholders' perspectives (schools and industry) at the delivery phase. 2. Developed an enhanced experience of a Hidden Curriculum, which included all main stakeholders (schools and industry) at the design stage. 2.2.Developed two (1 for teaching and 1 for learning) very well 'polished' units/manuals in the field of CE Thinking. - Overall, CESchools aimed to create an enhanced experience of joint CE Thinking education delivery with the inclusion of various fields and academic experts from different EU partner countries. 3. Developed an OER platform that was flexible and user-friendly for all target groups both in schools and in the industry. Furthermore, this project directly or indirectly contributed to the following expected outcomes: - Created an optimal match between schools and industry to meet the needs of CE thinking. - Compared existing CE Thinking using hidden curriculum from different countries. - Mapped and complemented CE Thinking to other existing formal education and development routes in schools. - Promoted greater cooperation between schools and industry providers among national and international providers. - Enhanced exchange and cooperation between academia and industry for the benefit of future generations and participants. In countries where there was no clear regulatory framework for CE thinking, the deliverables positively influenced policy development for the CE approach through our conversations in our Multiplier Events and stakeholder reach out activities. -Raised the profile and recognition of CE mindedness. - Developed student and faculty professional profiles on the way of CE thinking. - Contributed to the overall process of professionalization of CE mindedness.