Leadership makes school: school development through focused personnel managementStudents grow in a world of radical social changes. Strong influence by media, changing family structures, increasing percentage of families with migration background and floods of refugees characterise our living environment. The primary schools, as authentic collective schools, represent an exhaustive spectrum of social reality. Inclusion has been essential to the school system in South Tyrol for decades, in Rheinland-Pfalz specific schools for inclusion are increasingly developed. And there are progressively more children with behavioural disorders and chronic illnesses attending the schools. Therefore, teachers are more and more challenged to meet with pupils’ different learning preconditions and life conditions. Measures for increasing the sense of community, but also specifically referred to the single student, strong practical and competence orientation, cooperation and education to moral values, constructive feedback, individual support programs, clear structures and rules are all necessary to offer fair educational chances to children and to educate them as active, social people.Teachers are differently prepared to this demanding task and also differently used to adapting their teaching to new challenges. They have to incorporate their “usual autonomy” with the need to cooperate and collaborate collectively in processes of school development. Thus development oriented personnel management with constructive feedback culture, support through team work and vocational training are indispensable to the development of teaching quality in schools. Here the school principal plays a fundamental role.13 school principals from Rheinland-Pfalz and 7 from South Tyrol, the Centre for school psychology in Mainz and the Evaluation service in Bozen an a representant of the principals union work together, under the leadership of the representatives of the school authorities (Department for German school in South Tyrol, ADD Trier, field office for school surveillance Neustadt), on the quality improvement of their school systems, learning from each other. The professional cooperative exchange among school principals is highly relevant, because they work mostly alone and have to handle the pressure to initiate changes. Furthermore, the expectation for a change in attitude and teaching produces resistance among the teaching staff. In this regard, project intervision, good cooperation of the project managers and external partners for process supervision are fundamental. The frankness among all involved people, the disposition to self-reflection and cooperation is basically assured by all participants and contributes to develop awareness of the own point of view about good teaching, one’s own role and personnel management.The goal of the project is the enhancement and cooperation of school principals of both regions in leadership and supervision, relating to their central role in personnel management and their responsibility for teaching quality.In this regard the questions are: What collaborators and with what potential are at my disposal? What competences do we need at our school? The principals’ possibilities concerning the assignment of teachers to their schools are small, therefore the only possible way is to support and lead the given personnel so as to accomplish school development successfully in terms of a collective process.The project allows to create, exchange and test knowledge in personnel management and teaching development. All the efforts eventually target the goal to establish an attitude towards children which allows to deal with their diversity, to support them and to compensate disadvantages.In addition to the cooperative exchange during the meetings, the project includes common vocational trainings, school visits with teaching observations, job shadowing and debate sessions. The 20 schools define focal points in the area of teaching development and pursue them. The whole process, some encountered obstacles and the results will be presented at the end of the project. Elements of good practice in personnel management will be exchanged, tested, evaluated and documented. Eventually, all will be placed at the disposal of other school principals, supporting them in their various tasks and responsibilities. I wide group of people of the 20 schools, the involved institutions, and through the subsequent divulgement many more, will profit enduringly from the project.
Initial situation: Primary schools as "real comprehensive schools" and school districts in South Tyrol represent the entire spectrum of social reality, which is subject to strong social and digital change. Teachers are called upon to meet the different learning requirements and living conditions of their pupils. They are able to cope with this demanding task with different competences and they are only used to further developing school and teaching together in different ways. The school management and the school inspectorate have a key role to play, and the project should significantly strengthen and accompany them in fulfilling this role. 13 school principals from Rhineland-Palatinate and 6 school leaders from South Tyrol, the School Psychological Counselling Centre Mainz (PL) and the Evaluation Center for the German Education System, Province of Bolzano, therefore worked together as partner institutions under the leadership of the two representatives of the school authorities (School Authority of the Autonomous Province of Bolzano and ADD Trier, Regional Office of School Inspection Neustadt) to improve the quality of their systems and learned from and with each other. The participating school institutions started the project with a wide variety of site-specific profiles and country-specific conditions, so that people with different experience and skills could work together professionally across national borders. The aim of the project was to strengthen and cooperate in European cooperation between the leaders (in school management and school supervision...) of the two regions with regard to their central role in personnel management and responsibility for the quality of teaching. Their competence lies in leading and motivating employees in such a way that they actively participate in development processes. The aim of the project was therefore to design and implement a school development project together with the teaching staff at each participating school. This process was supported from start to finish by experience-oriented training sessions with a consultant from the management consulting department. Knowledge in project management, basic leadership skills and strategies of personnel management were imparted through professional communication (feedback and employee discussions, dealing with resistance), trained and concretely implemented in each case in the own school. The established steering group planned the course of the project, the meetings and further training contents in close cooperation with the participants in a target- and result-oriented manner and in line with their needs and took over the task of advising and accompanying the school in the development of suitable projects. At project meetings and in training, teaching and learning activities across national borders, in addition to collegial exchange and joint further training, school visits with teaching visits, job shadowings for project participants, advice for school development projects and evaluation rounds took place. The intervisorial work in the course of the project was of particular importance: the topics were dealing with resistance, overcoming stumbling blocks, acknowledging milestones and reflecting on what has been achieved so far. The school leaders were able to expand and consolidate their leadership skills in the project. With the acquired knowledge about personnel management and project management, it was possible to install new projects for teaching and school development in all schools. A network has been established between the school leaders both regionally and nationally, which guarantees a close exchange between the schools also in the future and enables mutual consultation and "intervision" at any time. All steps of the further training, the planned and implemented school projects with realistic experiences and findings (e.g. on, to planning conferences, concrete further training materials ...) were documented and examples were posted on the homepage: www.fuehrung-macht-schule.eu In addition, a project brochure and a documentary film were produced, which was filmed during the entire project period and give a good insight into the entire project work. These are also stored on the homepage. In addition to the development of lessons at the schools, a long-term benefit can be seen in the development of personal leadership skills as well as in the wide variety of materials that have been created and are available on the homepage. All this will now be available to other school leaders in school and school inspectorate, whereby a very large circle of people, in addition to the many institutions involved, will benefit sustainably from the project.