The Welcoming Environment for Leading and Learning Project

The school principals’ role is intensifying, the profession is ageing. Working conditions are often unattractive and partner countries are facing decreasing numbers of applications for principal p...

The school principals’ role is intensifying, the profession is ageing. Working conditions are often unattractive and partner countries are facing decreasing numbers of applications for principal positions. Deputy principals and teachers feel that the additional rewards offered to principals are too small to compensate for the large increase in workload. The partnership aimed at contributing to ease some of the school leaders’ tasks through: 1. Developing skills for effective school leadership and collaboration 2. Creating a network of institutions for future cooperation 3. Accessibility of improved and innovative materials for school leaders 4. Making school leadership an attractive profession 5. Creating a positive school environment where all pupils´/ students’ needs and talents are recognized and supported. The main objectives of the project were: • Increasing quality in the work, activities and practices of schools and institutions involved, opening to new actors locally and transnationally. • Enabling transformation and change (at individual, organisational or sectoral level), leading to improvements and new approaches, in proportion to the context of each organisation.

To achieve the above-mentioned objectives, we undertook the following steps: 1. We enabled exchange of good practice across the partner countries through training events thus upskilling school principals/other professionals. Each partner country organized a 3-day course aimed at effective leadership. Five training courses were delivered during the lifespan of the project. 2. We created and maintained the project website (www.erasmus-thewell.eu) that offers good practice including a Methodology incorporating interventions, case studies and materials addressing the topic of effective leadership for inclusion. 3. We were collecting materials, good practice examples and doing research for the Methodology, through the exchange of good practice in partner countries, auditing, analysing and discussing what works well. 4. We were continuously upskilling staff in partner countries. Participants who attended the learning activities then cascaded gained knowledge to their colleagues and managers inside and outside their organization. Of course, there was a robust system of the project management and organisation behind these concrete steps. Each partner appointed a project team that was supporting the project activities.

The concrete outputs we originally planned in the project application were as follows: 1. Training Activities for School Leaders and other professionals in education. Result - 5 learning activities held, 200 school leaders upskilled to provide effective leadership. The task is completed. 2. Methodology on effective leadership for school leaders and educational managers. Result - 1 Methodology issued in electronic versions in all partner languages. The task is completed. 3. The Well Project website (www.erasmus-thewell.eu), the main dissemination tool and a place of shared learning and experience. Result - 1 website in all partner languages. The task is completed. A positive outcome of our project, which we anticipated but did not initially include among the main project results, is the willingness and desire declared by all partner institutions to further collaborate on the training of school leaders, teachers and other education specialists in issues of modern pedagogy and approaches to creating a positive and safe school atmosphere. The contacts established during the project activities resulted in the preparation of a follow-up project application for the Erasmus+ Call 2025.