Open Schools for Open Societies – OSOS

Open science, open source, open access…these concepts are now familiar to you. What about Open schools? 

According to the OSOS project (Open Schools for Open Societies), this term stands for schools that become open communities of learning by opening up to their community while using the school’s environment to enrich the learning experience of the students. It gives students the opportunity to learn together with the real world and other people than only their teachers.

The European funding for the OSOS project started in April 2017 and ended in March 2020. Today, 1169 schools participate in the project, and the project partners continue to support the schools after funding has formally ended. 

How can this project help me? 

OSOS develops inspiring projects that help parents to collaborate with teachers, encourage local businesses and professionals to participate in education projects, and urge policy-makers to support the approach.  

OSOS is not merely a catalogue of interesting educational projects or a network of like-minded education establishments. It also offers concrete implementation methods and guidelines. Through the Open Schooling 3-steps model and the OSOS roadmap, the project defines a framework for the transformation of schools into Open Schooling Hubs (networks of participating Open Schools helping each other) 

How can I use OSOS and what are its benefits? 

The OSOS network still welcomes new members. The project also provides a lot of informative materials online which can help teachers, parents, and other stakeholders in implementing open school projects.