Leadership of School Consortia

Project summary

The focus of this Strategic Partnership is to support the exchange of good practices with the aim of developing a set of support and training resources for leaders managing a group of schools or education establishments to: • share and confront ideas, practices and methods of multi-institutional leadership • develop networking to increase transnational working This project addresses the Horizontal Priority of… • educators, by strengthening the induction and professional development of multi-institutional school leaders This project addresses the Horizon Erasmus+ School Priority of… • strengthening leadership in education, including the role and profile of school leaders and distributed leadership It brings together five sets of institutions from five countries, all of whom are involved in the leadership of multi-school federations or multi-sectorial schools. The organisation of school systems has changed significantly in recent years. The UK has seen the development of multi-academy trusts, with groups of schools working together. A similar arrangement of federations of schools operates in Portugal and in other countries, schools have combined phases of education on the same site, from Early Years through to Upper Secondary. In this project, this is the case for the partners from Greece and Bulgaria. Other structures bring together general, vocational and sometimes Higher Education all under the same umbrella. The Spanish partner in this project represents such a structure. The leadership of these more complex structures is more challenging than running a single institution. This project brings together 5 different types of structures from 5 countries to share their practice, common issues and to explore best practice. The objectives of the project are to: • use study visits to analyse examples of successful multi-institutional education leadership • identify common management issues, specific areas of leadership challenge and opportunity and identify the key leadership strategies • identify tools to evaluate impact in the short, medium and longer term, including data and feedback from students, teachers and other stakeholders • draw up a list of actions to be taken by each partner to improve their provision and practice in one or two of the key areas • draw up examples of best practice • produce a report on the outcomes and sets of case studies • disseminate the outcomes widely The project highlights the fact that leadership issues are common across the EU and the outcome of a set of case studies can be used more widely across the EU. The project also addresses the issues identified at the EU level as outlined above. The case studies will be developed through teaching and learning activities, and link to both the expertise of the schools and the needs of their partners to ensure a clear transfer of innovation. These will cover five themes: • Using the strengths in the partnership to improve standards and the quality of teaching and learning • Developing inclusion in a socially and ethnically challenging context • Management of structures and language across the curriculum • Developing an ethos and exploiting community links • Teacher training and monitoring the quality of teaching and learning The target groups are existing and potential leaders of school consortia, multi-sectoral schools, and those who lead sections within those consortia, for example the nursery section, or the Primary section, and those with responsibility for cross-sectorial strands, for example literacy across the consortium. It will also include those who are aspiring to take on such leadership roles.