The 1st Primary School of Rafina has an over 80 years history and, as its name suggests, is placed in the center of the city of Rafina, near the port. The year 2016-2017 there are 300 students attending and 26 teachers serving. From year 2016-2017 school has been selected by the Ministry of Education to host the local Center of Refugee Children Education (ΔΥΕΠ).
Educational innovation is school’s key characteristic. Over the years it consistently initiates cutting-edge, project – based educational programmes, in the fields of culture, environment, science and Information Communication Technologies. Among the leading projects originated are the “Aquaponics Gardening” (2014-2017) and “Elytis, Gatsos, Tsirkas: 100 years later – Blog creation” (2010-2011). For the later project, school was nominated the 1st National Award for Blog Creation (2011). Since September 2016 the 1st Primary School of Rafina is an affiliate of the “Playing with Protons” project, a new science education initiative, led by the CMS Experiment at CERN.
The school has also a strong participation in European programmes such as the e-twinning labelled programmes “International Art Museum: Paint the World” and “Un voyage avec le Petit Prince. À la recherche de l’amitié”, and the European Programmes “Europe at Schools through Art and Simulation” (EuropeStARTS) (European Programme Jean Monnet “Learning EU at Schools”) and the “ENGINEER” (brEaking New Ground In the SciencE Education Realm) project. Since 2013-14 school is a member of the Eco – Schools Network. For the school year 2014-15 1st Primary School of Rafina joined the Litter Less campaign, which aims to reduce litter and affect long-term behavior change among youth. Litter Less campaign is run by the Foundation for Environmental Education’s Eco-Schools with the support of the Wrigley Company Foundation. During school year 2014-15 school joined Open Discovery Space, a socially-powered and multilingual open learning infrastructure which aims at boosting the adoption of eLearning resources (Act no 739/21-1-2015 of the Institute of Educational Policy).
1st Primary School of Rafina encourages ICT uptake both at the level of administration and the level of classroom teaching, and the implementation of multiple intelligences theory in daily teaching practices. It is a community – oriented institution, strongly cooperating with local stakeholders to expand learning opportunities and foster 21st century skills in pupils.