"<< Background >>Encouraging interest in science for youth is vital to address the shortage of scientific vocations in Europe. School science attitudes tend to be positive in primary school but decline through secondary school education. One of the main cited reasons is the mismatch between the school science curriculum and the scientific issues of interest to young people. For instance, while the experiments designed for school labs provide an excellent introduction to the scientific method's foundations, they hardly offer opportunities to understand all the scientific research steps truly. On the other hand, soft skills such as communication, work ethics, and entrepreneurship are more necessary than ever because both the market labour and the society are changing rapidly due to the so-called megatrends (globalisation, digitalisation, climate change and societal change). In this view, all European countries are implementing the European framework of Key Competences for Lifelong Learning and the European Commission encourage cooperation between different learning settings (e.g. formal and non formal education). From their parts schools are more and more participating in citizen science projects. Citizen science is an informal science activity enabling the pupils to experience an authentic scientific project and understand the environmental issues affecting their nearby environment from the perspective of lifelong learning. Regrettably, the vast majority of citizen science projects are contributory involving pupils in data collection and reporting, which fits better primary and lower secondary school educational objectives.The main barriers for the implementation of citizen science projects that involve the teachers and their pupils in all the phases of a scientific study (co-created citizen science) are:•The concerns raised by the scientific community about the quality of the obtained data and results.• Most teachers have never participated in scientific investigations. It is therefore challenging for them to approach scientists for co-designing a scientific research project.• curriculum constraints.The European Reference Framework for key competences outlines eight interdependent key competences for lifelong learning necessary to better adapt European education to the changing realities of the 21st century. Nevertheless, most educators across Europe face the challenge of finding strategies to implement these competences within the different subject areas pragmatically. The main issue is that these competences are cross-curricular and non-subject specific, while school time tables are built upon single subject lessons. On the other hand, citizen science involves aspects related to these competences as active learning inside and outside the school and collaboration with universities, research centres and communities.<< Objectives >>The Raise-CS project will tackle the issues and needs mentioned above in the frame of the relatively recent research field of microplastic pollution that is causing global ecological and human health concerns.The overall goal of the ""Raise-CS"" project is twofold: - To lay the groundwork for implementing an EU-wide citizen science programme run in a robust and harmonised manner by secondary schools, and;- To root citizen science in the European reference framework of key competences for lifelong learning with the view to integrating this practice in secondary schools curricula and use the sailboat as a motivation factor and a tool to develop interpersonal and soft skillsTo reach this goal, we have set the following specific objectives :1- To demonstrate that secondary schools can generate reliable and useful data and knowledge within the research field of microplastic pollution;2- To associate citizen science with the eight key competences for lifelong learning and integrate the activities in a cross-disciplinary manner.3- To empower science teachers to connect and actively collaborate with the scientific community.4- To build a strategic roadmap for implementing an EU-wide scale microplastic pollution monitoring carried out by secondary schools in collaboration with the scientific community and relevant stakeholders.<< Implementation >>To achieve our objectives we will:-Identify, through a literature survey, analytical methods that can be implemented in secondary school’s labs and write standard Operating Procedures -Run in-house method validation according to international standards and making use of microplastic reference materials (Operator: scientist)-Transfer of the methods to a secondary school chemistry lab (Operator: Teacher)-Realise inclusive citizen science campaigns and assess microplastic pollution using the validated methods-Present the obtained results to the scientific community-Realise environmental awareness campaigns for the large publicThe sailboat will be used in this project as a motivation factor for the students and to build bridges between formal and non-formal education.<< Results >>We will provide the following results:1- Robust Methods for assessing microplastic pollution in aquatic environments that can be implemented in upper secondary schools.The methods will be accompanied by: a- validation reports corroborating that the methods are evaluated and tested according to requirements of international standards to produce valid results b- Method transfer report corroborating that the methods are suitable for use within a secondary school chemistry lab. c- standalone training courses consisting of video tutorials with additional explanations and background information. The video tutorials are intended for teachers and, even more particularly to pupils as they might lack knowledge of equipment used in the lab. This will enable them to spend more time deepening their understanding of the procedure than troubleshooting the experiment.d- Guidelines on how to transfer any analytical methods to secondary chemistry labs.2- Guidelines on how to associate citizen science activities to the key competences and integrate them within secondary schools in a cross-disciplinary manner.3- A strategic roadmap and a catalogue of guidelines for implementing an EU-wide harmonised monitoring of microplastic pollution in aquatic environments co-created by secondary schools."