The Far Beyond the Barriers project is based on the belief that every student should be given the chance to be accepted, valued, and have equal opportunities to develop their skills and future career without discrimination and irrespective of their abilities.

In light of UN Sustainable Development Goal 4, quality education for all, our partnership acknowledges that as long as there are children and young people with fewer opportunities to benefit from quality education than their peers, because of personal and learning difficulties, we need to take action to achieve equality and inclusion in our schools and classrooms.

As four partners from three different countries (Poland, Romania, and Türkiye), we would like to address the real demand for inclusive education for quality education within this project. Despite inclusive education being increasingly recognised at international level, there is no common way to apply mainstream education systems and inclusive education; even the understanding of terms such as disability and difficulty may differ from country to country.

Within this project, we aim to encourage partner countries to exchange best practices and learn from each other because it is highly crucial that a deep and open discussion is held on how to make our education system more inclusive for everyone, irrespective of any difficulties. Although our main target groups are students with learning difficulties, we would like to open a framework for gifted students who have attention deficit and hyperactivity.

These children are often misunderstood because of their ADHD. For this reason, we chose STEAM education as it is multi-disciplinary and allows students enough flexibility to think creatively while gaining skills that are prerequisites for their future lives and careers.

The main objectives of the Far Beyond the Barriers project are

• Promoting awareness and fighting stigma against students with Learning Difficulties (LDs) because if this group of students has access to greater knowledge and practice, they are more than capable of closing the gap between them and their peers.
• Promoting and modelling positive attitudes and respectful language in schools/classrooms for social and emotional inclusion.
• Ensuring necessary assistance to teachers as learning difficulties are often misunderstood even by them, which can lead to poor education and care for these students.
• Promoting the use of different teaching approaches, disciplines, and tools for teachers such as the STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts, mathematics) education approach, creative drama, game-based teaching, and sport and providing them with a teacher guide (R1) to better include students with LDs in mainstream education.
• Delivering an online course with five modules for teachers that can help teachers have the greatest impact on their students.

To achieve the abovementioned objectives, school managers/teachers need to be more confident in identifying and making changes to the school environment to positively support the integration of students with learning difficulties. As the main facilitators of our education systems, teachers need to be educated and trained in how inclusion in school/class can be achieved and which strategies, approaches, techniques, methods, and tools can be used to achieve that goal. We would like to address all these needs during and after the project with our sustainability activities.