We are organised as an educational cooperative, and the project is supported and guided collaboratively by local families and professionals.
We are a community made up of 754 students, 457 families and 67 professionals. Founded in 1971 by a group of euskaltzale families from Bergara, year after year we have built, through community work, a home that offers comprehensive education from ages 0 to 18: our second home.
We are an organisation recognised as being of Public Utility, because we were born from the community and are devoted to the community. We also have a public character and are a non-profit cooperative.
Aranzadi Ikastola is a grassroots initiative, and although it does not depend directly on the administration, it provides a public service: it is open to everyone, governed by citizens, non-profit and works in collaboration with various community organisations.
The Ikastolen Elkartea network is made up of 115 ikastolas across Euskal Herria. Its aim is precisely to preserve and strengthen the Basque language and Basque culture beyond the administrative borders of our country. We share a common educational and community project and, with the Basque Curriculum as our foundation, we create and develop our own pedagogy and teaching materials.
The educational model of the ikastolas is a proposal centred on the development of the person. This means that we understand our task as helping each person develop in all their dimensions —social, cognitive, motor, emotional, existential…—, beyond simply helping them build knowledge in different areas.
In other words, beyond learning to do, we develop an educational proposal aimed at learning to be. Indeed, in our view, the success of peoples and nations is not measured only by what the people who make up their society know, but by their human quality.
We are committed to educating euskaldun, entrepreneurial and decisive, cooperative and transformative people with inner strength, so that they may develop these characteristics and values throughout their lives.
IKASTOLA MODEL
The ikastola is the practice of community self-organisation, whose aim is to create and develop Basque-language education, and which has built its own educational model through collaboration, across the seven territories of Euskal Herria.
Ikastolas offer a third way in education, beyond the logic of the public and the private. This path is that of social ownership, based on the participation of civil society. We believe in the community model, in which, in addition to the public administration, citizens have a voice and decision-making power over the educational project.
IN BERGARA, BY THE PEOPLE OF BERGARA
Each ikastola has built its own path in its town. Here in Bergara, we develop a project that is meaningful and liveable for the people of Bergara. Our town, with its own characteristics and realities, faces a range of challenges, and the Ikastola is a tool for responding to them.
We are committed to helping build a more Basque-speaking, sustainable, inclusive, feminist, supportive, balanced and accessible Bergara. That is why we have alliances with local networks, projects and groups.
To build the town, we believe the most appropriate path is for decisions about the education of Bergara’s children and young people to be in the hands of the people of Bergara, and the Ikastola gives us that opportunity.
ARANZADI IS...
The nest of the Basque language. We live Bergara, our town, through and in Basque.
A symbiosis between the Ikastola and families. Trust, collaboration and metamorphosis.
A laboratory for transformative ideas. A place to learn to unlearn what has been learned.
A living community, movement, cooperation, solidarity and empathy.
The second home of many families in Bergara. Close, warm and full of care.
A free space, a shelter for free life projects and individual paths.
Quality. A gateway to knowing and developing oneself.
Pedagogy, listening to one another.
THE FUTURE
Imagining what kind of future we want to leave to our children and young people is just as important as thinking about what kind of people we want for the future. That is why our work is based on our model of the person.
TRANSFORMATION
The vocation of the ikastolas is to educate citizens who will transform and improve society. To this end, Aranzadi will accompany them in developing five defining traits: euskaldun identity, inner strength, entrepreneurial decision-making, transformation and cooperation.