The IEC is a school with a close link to higher education institutions, scientific research institutes, companies based on new technologies, schools, the local authority and national and local entities that promote scientific and cultural dissemination, such as Ciência Viva - National Agency for Scientific and Technological Culture, to which the IEC is closely linked, promoting its mission of inserting Science in the general culture.

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The IEC promotes education, modernization and community development in between the Universities of Coimbra and Aveiro, using dissemination and training programs in the scope of Science, Health, Environment, New Technologies and Modern Languages.

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In addition to its role as an institution of scientific dissemination, acting as a “Escola Ciência Viva”, with the perspective of promoting the insertion of Science in the general culture, with schools and populations, the IEC has functions that go beyond dissemination. Thus, the IEC has protocols with schools and universities, and serves as an interface between them, to generate, with schools, the competence and conditions necessary for a strategic change in teaching in schools, with the support of universities and research institutes.

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The IEC recognizes an ongoing process of decentralization of education, in which municipalities will have a greater responsibility towards schools. It is the role of the IEC to contribute to this transformation in teaching, which implies greater local educational skills that facilitate the transfer of knowledge from higher education to schools. In this sense, the IEC is a prototype of an institution that, in the near future, will be necessary to implement, particularly in rural areas, to help in the educational transformation that leads to the Portuguese youth in these environments having equal opportunities, when compared to young people in the city.