Ørestad Gymnasium

Ørestad Gymnasium is a general upper secondary high school in Denmark offering specialized study programmes within the natural sciences, the social sciences, and the humanities. In particular, we focus on media, communications, and culture.

It wishes to be "the obvious school choice for students who wish to prepare for further and higher education within media, communications, and culture". At the same time it is a high school for everybody else who does not wish to pursue a career within the media industry. Here young people acquire skills to be able to get on in a society in which the production of knowledge and experience is playing a steadily increasing role.

The school profile is reflected in our range of specialized study programmes, in the teaching topics of each subject and interdisciplinary activities as well as in our network relations with companies and institutions within the media and communications industry (for instance The Danish Broadcasting Corporation, The IT University of Copenhagen, The University of Copenhagen, and Apple).

Ørestad Gymnasium organizes the teaching in order to give the students the skills needed to complete further and higher education and to function in a society based on knowledge and experience. We organize our teaching as an interaction between strongly teacher-centred education with the point of departure in the traditional class and plenary environments (auditorium), group based learning environments, individual acquisition of knowledge (e.g. through the use of virtual teaching), and teaching based on real life cases planned in co-operation with external partners.

By means of ICT a coherent organization of the teaching is created thus enabling the teacher and the individual student to get an overview of the necessary subject-matter needed as well as a guideline as to where the student is in his or her learning process. Ørestad Gymnasium is a virtual high school extremely well-equipped with state-of-the-art technology. ICT is used as an important learning platform, and the school provides the necessary equipment to the students, even after school. Our goal is to have the students use the school as a study camp for homework and written assignments. Thus, we offer them the support of teachers for guidance every day after school.

The new building in the Ørestad City district is a unique opportunity for the school to implement its profile and pedagogical visions. The building is created to nourish a pedagogy aiming at a flexible and structured use of different learning environments. The building is an open space where the activities of the students, the teachers, the administrative staff, and the management are visible to everybody in order to facilitate communication and inspire each other.

For more details see http://www.oerestadgym.dk/

Organisation and description of operating principles

(sourced from http://www.oerestadgym.dk/welcome/organisation-and-description-of-operating-principles/)

Ørestad Gymnasium is organized in order to undertake the following tasks:

• to ensure the fulfilment of the school’s mission, vision, and strategy.
• to ensure that the high school reform is implemented in order to meet the aims of the reform to offer students an eduction with quality.
• to function under the new management conditions as an independent state institution

The school is therefore organized as a learning organization, i.e. with a team and project-oriented organization and a management plotting the framework and the objectives.

The school is managed by a strategic management consisting of a Principal, Vice Principal, and Head of Administration.

The school is organized in three branches:

1. Teaching: The basic organization consists of interdisciplinary teaching teams of 7-9 teachers who are responsible for 3-4 classes within the same (or closely related) specialized study programmes. The team is responsible for solving the tasks which originate from the high school reform (co-ordination, statement of aims, evaluation, follow-up on the skills development of the students). Each team is managed by a team manager. The teams refer to the Principal and the Vice Principal.
2. Development and quality: A number of teachers function as co-ordinators and are responsible for developing and ensuring a high quality within their particular field of responsibility. In co-operation with the management, the co-ordinators set up project groups on a continuous basis whose job is to solve evaluation and development tasks. The development and quality section is managed by the Vice Principal.
3. Support functions: The job of the support staff is to establish the optimal framework for teaching and consists of the school’s non-administrative staff. The support staff is organized in three sections: administration, technical assistance, and computer support. In addition, a number of tasks are solved by private contractors. The support staff is managed by the Head of Administration.

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