The Framhaldsskólinn í Austur-Skaftafellssýsla or FAS for short is a secondary school in the south-east part of Iceland in a town called Höfn. Höfn is a portside town in the county. The county has about 2500 inhabitants. Most of the people or about 1800 live in the town. About 700 people live on farms or in small populated areas.
The school was founded in 1987 by the state and county and for the first years the school was located in a building about 7 kilometres from the town. It was there for the first 15 years. The school moved to the building Nýheimar in the Höfn in the autumn of 2002. The role of the school is first and foremost to offer general book studies, but in addition emphasis is placed on internships in accordance with current demand, adult education and lifelong Lerning.
In FAS you can choose between 6 different fields of study; social sciences, natural sciences, elective program, engineering study, mountaineering course and the horse training course.
The standard courses consist of Naturale Science, Humanities and Social Sciences, Elective programs and engineering studies. In natural science you learn about physics, chemistry, biology and etc. In humanities and social sciences you learn philosophy psychology etc. In the elective program you get to pick your classes more according to the job you want in the future things like art, sports etc. Engineering studies is about working with machines 750 Kw or less .
Mountaineering study at FAS.
The new courses constitutes of Mountaineering and Horse training. Mountaineering study is about mountaineering, first aid, cliff and glacier climbing, etc. Horse training study is about training of horses, ownership, and how to make a living from horses.
FAS is school with about 200 students both who attend classes and who take online classes. 60 students attend regulary. The rest are student who attend irregulaly like mauntenering. The students are friendly. We also have a wall with every year graduation.
Our final exam are spoken face to face with a teacher insted of a writing the exams. We also do many different surveys about nature. Instead of having tests on paper, we keep a portfollio for each class.
Distance to an outlet glacier measured.
The outside studie relly fun, because we get to go out of the classrooms into the nature. We survey the melting two outlet glaciers of the glacier Vatnajökull. Also that is a good way of being close to the glacier free of charge. We also measure a specific grid of trees at the sand Skeiðarássandur and then we count the trees in the grid. Just about 20 years ago this sand was almost a black desert. In FAS we also have a survey where count birds and bird species.
FAS regards the participation of students in social life as an important part of organized learning at the school. This is especially true in the key areas of creative thinking, equality and democracy. Social life should be sustainable and democratic, self-evident from students’ interest in the inherent aspects of human life. Fixed hours are provided in the school timetable so that students can take part in social life during school hours.
Written by Mateja, Sævar Rafn and Zarko
Presenation about Framhaldsskólinn í Austur-Skaftafellssýslu (FAS)