Primary school OŠ Podgora Kuteževo is located in the southwest part of Slovenia in municipality Ilirska Bistrica. Local people also name this area Kočanija.
First school in the area was built in 1906 in Kuteževo. The old part of current school was built in 1978 and due to large number of pupils a new building was built in 1999.
Our school lies in an amazing environment surrounded by forests, meadows and fields which allow us to learn about nature in the school vicinity.
Since our school is placed in a rural area we try to keep the area alive also by offering the local children the same opportunities as children have in larger cities and towns. We do not want to make our pupils feel they are something less because they live in a rural area. Therefore, we offer various extra-curricular activities e.g. drama club, choir, folklore, farming group (children take care of a couple of chickens), firefighters, basketball, karate and much more. On the other hand, we want our students to have a sense of their heritage which is closely related to a rural way of life and not to be ashamed of it. Despite our size we are actively involved in many (inter)national projects such as Eco School, Healthy School, Culture School, Škocjan Caves Network of Schools and many other yearly projects.
Since our school is located in a village, there are only 70 pupils attending it aged between 6 and 15. Some lessons are taught in two classes at the same time, e.g. class 3 and 4 have joined class of Slovene or Maths. This takes a lot of work on the side of the teachers and a lot of discipline on the part of the pupils. We would really like to widen the horizons of our pupils, staff and parents and we feel that international cooperation is a great way to show that size does not matter when it comes showing openess, acceptance and tolerance towards other nations, races, abilities and ways of life in general. Therefore, we have so far successfully completed two international projects:
2008-2010 Comenius project Myths, stories and legends of Europe,
2013-2015 Comenius project Growing and Developing as a European Citizen for the Future.
We are eager to learn more and are looking forward to taking part in new projects in the future.