Inclusive Education in Action: The Atollo Project’s Final Conference Comes to Pula

Atollo Final Conference Pula

In a few weeks, the Atollo Project will host our final conference in Pula. This ancient Istrian city is home to one of the best-preserved Roman amphitheatres in the world and a history stretching back over 3,000 years, and has long been a place where different cultures, languages, and peoples have come together. Situated at the southern tip of the Istrian peninsula, Pula is a city shaped by centuries of cultural exchange. Its residents have historically been fluent in both Croatian and Italian, as well as German and English, reflecting the many layers of its past.

Home to One of Our Own

But Pula means something more personal to the Atollo Project. It is home to one of our core project partners, the School for Training and Education Pula — the only institution in the Istria region that delivers both primary and secondary education programmes for students with major developmental disabilities aged 6 to 21. With a community of around forty dedicated practitioners and deep connections to similar institutions across Croatia, the school has been an invaluable contributor to the Atollo consortium from the very beginning, serving as the primary pilot site for the digital educational content developed through the project.

That long-term commitment is perhaps best captured in the words of the school’s principal, Višnja Popović, who reflects on the partnership not only as a project contribution, but as a shared journey:

“As a partner school in the Atollo project, but also one of the originators of the idea itself, we are particularly proud of the journey we have traveled together. To our initiative and request for cooperation and the idea of creating quality digital materials for students with intellectual disabilities, Profil Klett responded with this great project. From that initial spark, a strong flame of cooperation developed that spread to such a wide scale — which makes us sincerely happy and gives us the right to believe that we managed to trigger the best in each of us.

By participating in the piloting of Atollo’s digital materials and installing smart boards, we received valuable resources that enriched our daily school life, empowered our students and opened up new opportunities for their progress. As an institution that selflessly works to equalize the rights and opportunities of students with intellectual disabilities, we see this project as an important step towards better quality and fairer education.

We look forward to hosting the final conference in Pula because it is an opportunity to proudly present our school, our city and our country and share an experience that shows how shared vision and collaboration can bring about real, visible change.”
— Višnja Popović, Principal, Škola za odgoj i obrazovanje Pula

School for Training and Education Pula

Founded in 1958 and operating from a striking Austro-Hungarian building on Monte Zaro, the School for Training and Education Pula has over six decades of experience supporting learners who need it most. Today it serves students from across the whole of Istria — not just Pula — offering a wide range of education and vocational training pathways that prepare young people for real working life: from cooking and floristry to gardening, plumbing, and winemaking.

Crucially, many of those students go on to find employment. The school has partnerships with local businesses and city companies that offer internships, and many students are taken on afterwards — earning their own income and building independent lives. It is a school that measures its success not just in academic terms, but in the dignity and belonging it helps its students achieve. That philosophy sits at the very heart of what the Atollo Project has always stood for.

Last summer, that partnership reached a tangible milestone. Thanks to Erasmus+ funding secured through the Atollo Project, smart boards were installed across 17 classrooms at the school — transforming the physical learning environment and giving teachers the tools to bring the project’s inclusive digital content to life. The response from both educators and students was overwhelmingly positive, with teachers highlighting how the technology allows them to adapt content to meet each learner’s individual needs.

The Atollo final conference on 14 May 2026 is, in many ways, coming home — not just to Croatia, but to the school and the students who sat at the very heart of what this project was always about.