Merkez Secondary school - founded in 1823- is one of the oldest schools in Turkey. The school building is situated in a considerably large yard which includes volleyball, basketball and football pitches. We have 8 classes, a computer room, a library, a music room and a science class equipped with experimental materials. All the classrooms are equipped with computers and video projections. There is also a counseling service in operation for students and parents which can be accessed all the time. There are 175 students and a team of 16 experienced teachers in our school. The students are aged between 11 and 15. English is taught as a second language in the school.

Our motivation to join this project primarily comes from a need to improve science education in our school. According
to our science teachers, science curriculum is very intense and it puts emphasize mostly on teaching theories, leaving almost no space for the practice of science. In this case, students have to memorize the theories for the sake of passing exams which makes science uninteresting, irrelevant and hard to learn. Joining this project we aim to make science attractive to our students by introducing them the
practical side of science and help them gain essential skills like critical thinking, creative thinking, problem-solving and so on through hands-on experiments and activities.

We also aim to help our science teachers to upgrade their knowledge and teaching skills.

We are an experienced school in terms of Erasmus+ projects. We successfully coordinated a KA219 project named “I’m Planning My Future” in the past. Also we currently are a partner of an e-Twinning technology project where
students build schematic scale models of partner schools’ buildings.