1st EPAL of Piraeus

1st EPAL of Piraeus is located in Kaminia, a well-known neighborhood of Piraeus, a few kilometers away from the biggest Greek port. Almost 60 teachers work in 1st EPAL of Piraeus and almost 400 students aged between 15-19 attend the school curriculum. The departments that operate are Mechanical Engineers-Car, Electronics, Electrical, Structure, Financing, and Management, Healthcare, Tourism Management, IT: Informatics and Networking, Food Technology and Agricultural Field. There are well-equipped laboratories, which all of them are located in the school building for every specialization, where the students practice and deepen their und1st EPAL of Piraeus is located in Kaminia, a well-known neighborhood of Piraeus, a few kilometers away from the biggest Greek port (Piraeus). The building used to be the first textile school in Greece created by the relative industry to educate the laborers the last one needed. Later on, the building was donated to the Ministry of Education to work as a vocational school.
Almost 60 teachers work in the 1st EPAL of Piraeus and almost 400 students aged between 15-18 attend the 8:00am-2:00pm school curriculum. The departments of technical and vocational courses that operate are Mechanical Engineers-Car Engineers-Air Conditioning-Heating-Refrigeration, Electronics, Electrical Installation, Structure, health care: nurses, daycare and medical laboratories, Financing and Management, Tourism Management, IT: Informatics and Networking, Food Technology and Agricultural Field. There are well-equipped laboratories, which are located in the school building for every specialization, where the students practice and deepen their understanding of new knowledge. The school’s mission is to cultivate a suitable environment that will facilitate creative activity, educate, and prepare the next generation, to it satisfy the needs and the challenges of our modern time.
Our school has been manufactured by the Municipality of Piraeus a maker space. This maker space aims to familiarize students and others with the principles of the circular economy. The maker space is equipped with the necessary mechanical equipment and will among other things provide training to students, the unemployed, disabled people, etc. on using high-tech equipment for transforming used materials into new products. What is more, the maker space will provide educational support on product design and innovative production processes centered around the principles of the circular economy.
Due to the school’s location, we have students from the whole Piraeus region, especially from Kaminia, a poor and blighted area. They are the pupils who have the smallest and hardest introduction to the labor market and need more guidance if we consider that there are no courses for the career in the education system and that Greece is the country with the largest unemployment in Europe. 10 years ago in our school, there was a permanent structure for career guidance and counseling. During the crisis stopped, but the teachers who were in this structure and had the specialization were in the school yet.
This also creates a non-homogeneous social-economic profile for our students. A vast amount of them have serious family, personal, and economic issues. For the most difficult of those cases, we have created an internal structure, which does its best to help our students. It is estimated that 30% of our students are immigrants from Albania. Another big enough student percentage comes from Eastern Europe and smaller groups come from Africa and Asia. Many of our students have also issues with the Greek language
Our school collaborates with local companies, some of them being the biggest and most well known for their products in Greece (Elais.ion, opel cars etc). Considering the above collaborations, there are visits of our students to those companies. In addition to this, people from the companies also visit our school. They do either in our school meetings, to inform and educate our pupils. Our desire is for the number of companies which collaborate with our school to become wider. Furthermore, we would also like to go on with new collaborations with other companies whose activities are different and new to us.
There are also some other collaborations of our school with local institutions such as social associations and athletic clubs. Our school also collaborates with Tzaneio Hospital by creating blood donations and by making briefings on health issues. Besides this, our school allocates a blood bank in the hospital. There are also some events about athletic and social subjects. We have to mention also that many of the interns of the Olympiakos fc news football team are students of our school.
During the last years 1st EPAL has increased its participation with the European programs. Through them, it has improved its significance for the city of Piraeus, and the educational results that provides to the students and we have gained experience in management programs. We want to increase our capacity to work at the EU/international level, to improve management competencies, internationalization strategies, and cooperation with partners from other countries.erstanding of new knowledge.