Agrupamento de Escolas de Águas Santas (Portugal)
The Group of Schools of Águas Santas is located in the city of Águas Santas, located in the suburbs of Porto city (4km distance from Porto), and 8km away from the city of Maia. Due to its privileged location and a good public transport network, Águas Santas has encountered in the last decades a continuous urban and population expansion, becoming one of the most populous parishes of the municipality of Maia.
The residents of Águas Santas present a great sociological diversity, a situation that implies cultural uprooting, socioeconomic heterogeneity, disparate levels of schooling and training. It is in this physical and social context that this Group of Schools is located, which is a vertical grouping constituted in 2008, result of the merger of Águas Santas Primary and Secondary School, Moutidos Kindergarten and 4 primary schools (EB1 de Moutidos, Gandra School Center, Pícua School Center and Corim School Center).
This Group of Schools promotes the development of the following educational offerings:
- Kindergarten
- Pre-school
- Primary School
- Basic school
- High School
- VET school
- UAEM – Specialized Support Unit for Multideficiency.
These training offers are for a target audience of 2300 students, distributed in different levels of education: 91 classes from pre-school to secondary level and 5 classes from Vocational Education each year. Regarding the Basic and Secondary School of Águas Santas, headquarters of the Group of Schools, its current location dates back to the 1986/1987 school year, although over the years it has undergone successive expansion works. At the end of the last decade, it was included in the program for the modernization and requalification of the Parque Escolar and was the target of a fund intervention, which resulted in the construction of two new buildings, two gymnasiums, including changing rooms, locker rooms and support spaces, complete refurbishment of pre-existing classrooms and rehabilitation of outdoor recreation areas, including sports areas.
The second building is equipped with classrooms of varied typology and one room prepared and equipped for the Specialized Support Unit for Multideficiency (UAEM). From the academic year 2015/2016, one of the rooms of an existing pavilion was adapted for a second UAEM room to function. In order to guarantee a quality education for all the students, we have more than 220 teachers and educators in all our schools and 177 teachers only in the High School of Águas Santas and14 teachers for Special Needs, which are highly experienced in education, allowing us to cover efficiently all the areas of education.
Nowadays, we are a reference educational institution with the ambition to improve the education and training quality, starting from the motto “Esta é uma Escola feita de mãos – E de muitas mãos!” (“This School is made from hands – A lot of hands!”)
