Guillaume Fichet secondary school offers all courses including a vocational section. It is situated in the centre of a town of slightly more than 12 000 inhabitants. Our goal is to show that the creation of a European section (in September 2011) develops our students’ambitions and skills for a better vocational guidance. We wish to regurlaly send students to London, England for a 4 week internship in January, the goals being : - To develop our students’s well being, self esteem and self fulfillment - To increase their confidence and autonomy at school leading to improvements in their academic results for the rest of the year and a better success rate on their BTEC national and in their daily life - To take more initiatives - To improve personal and business linguistic skills - To learn how to manage a budget - To promote the desire to return to London on their own initiative - And to become more reliable citizens This year, 9 students have joined the European section. The mostly come from an underprivileged social backgroung and 40 % of them have poor academic results. They are motivated but some are introverted and lack self confidence. During their training period in London the students work in different shops and are supervised by internship tutors. Their main activities are : welcoming and informing the customers, working at the till, preparing the items (clothes, shoes, jewelry, accessories, books, homeware...) and resupplying, stock managing, displaying the items and implementing the shop window, maintaining and cleaning the shopping area and finally managing the banking documents. We signed a partnership document with the shops involved. Our students currently receive 2 weekly extra hours of study, one of European English (improving linguistic skills) and one hour of professional English (learning professional vocabulary). Those 2 hours strengthen the administrative, professional, cultural, educational and psychological preparation of the students for their internship in London. This project will have 5 different impacts : • Locally, the press that promotes our project • Regionally, by the documents we send back to them, signed by the partners (indicating the regional grant was well used), • Nationally, (the BTEC national success rate and evolution of our school's ranking) • In Europe (proof that the European grant has been used for our students’training and performance) • Regarding future job opportunities ; our students may have greater success securing an internship abroad Not only do our students become aware they must surpass themselves to optimally prepare their training period, but, it also acts as a springboard and a new beginning for their academic and personal life. Nowadays we are more and more focused on international exchanges. Thanks to sending of students to London and all the preparation that entails, our team of 3 teachers will remain intellectually challenged. Our students will always benefit from the experiences, work and motivation of their teachers.