A lot of children lack the education, support, and opportunity they need to thrive. The obstacles these children face — poverty, hunger, discrimination, trauma, and school systems that do not provide them with the education they need — are overwhelming. And when all these children aren’t learning, it affects us all, perpetuating poverty, dividing societies, and weakening economies. The European Commission promotes the role of education in fighting inequalities and promoting social inclusion. Sustainable Development Goal 4 is aiming at Ensuring inclusive and quality education for all. High quality education for all is also a key EU priority. As mentioned in the Education & Training Monitor of 2017, the organisation of a school system can significantly affect the social and economic outcomes of an education system. Headmasters therefore play a central role in the quality and equity of school education as they are responsible for supporting teachers’ professional development and competencies. Lack of high quality education is also often linked to inadequate (initial) training among staff and limited opportunities for professional development for teachers and principals. Schools and regions with a low socio economic index are often in need of teachers. Headmasters are almost desperate to find teachers and students sometimes remain for long periods without lessons. Even if they find teachers, almost one in two new recruits quits in their first five years because of how challenging their work is. Retaining talent is difficult. Headmasters have to face this reality and are often unprepared for it. They need new skills to recruit teachers, to support them during their first years of employment and to establish school management systems that provide new recruits with space for professional development. The project we have developed focuses on exchanging experience among Headmasters on best practices to recruit, select and support their new teachers; and how to adapt the way they manage their school to give those new teachers enough room for professional development. Through this Erasmus+ project, we would like to offer headmasters from inside and outside the “Teach for All” network the opportunity to exchange experience between peers and to develop new skills. “Teach for All” programmes exist in 17 European countries. Their partners recruit, train and offer school administrators an alternative pathway to teaching. We select and train (often young) professionals to become inspiring teachers (or teacher assistants) in subjects suffering from staff shortages (which vary from country to country). These teachers follow our intensive training and receive our guidance for 2 years. We identified for each country an ambassador school, willing to play a leading role in the exchange of experience. The ambassador schools have the responsibility to assess their current situation (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) and to define the skills they would like to acquire through the exchanges and the capacity building workshops that Teach for All provides. The partners on our Erasmus+ project will meet at a kick-off meeting in October 2018 to organise the collection of information through Google form surveys (on recruiting and welcoming new teachers, support and tutoring, and training for headmasters). School partners will collect this information through their network. Teach First Deutschland will be in charge of Teach for All’s Scandinavian partners, Teach for Slovakia will represent Central and Eastern European partners, and Teach for Belgium will cover Western Europe. These representatives will meet at a first mobility meeting in February 2019 to share their results on headmaster competencies in recruitment, staff selection and welcoming new teachers. They will select best practices and, based on their suggestions, EFCoCert will propose a first draft of the skill card. Partners will then collect information on supporting new teachers and meet again in May-June 2019 to share their results, collect best tutoring practices and create the skill card (competencies card). They will also collect information about training options for headmasters in Europe and meet in October 2019 to share their findings and summarise them in a training catalogue. Project participants will meet again to formalise outputs of the peer to peer exchanges and workshops in a skill card, and share it with a wider audience. The skills matrix will be translated in at least 3 European languages (English, French and German).
A lot of children lack the education, support, and opportunity they need to thrive. The obstacles these children face — poverty, hunger, discrimination, trauma, and school systems that do not provide them with the education they need — are overwhelming. And when all these children aren’t learning, it affects us all, perpetuating poverty, dividing societies, and weakening economies. The European Commission promotes the role of education in fighting inequalities and promoting social inclusion. Sustainable Development Goal 4 is aiming at Ensuring inclusive and quality education for all. High quality education for all is also a key EU priority. As mentioned in the Education & Training Monitor of 2017, the organisation of a school system can significantly affect the social and economic outcomes of an education system. Headmasters therefore play a central role in the quality and equity of school education as they are responsible for supporting teachers’ professional development and competencies. Lack of high quality education is also often linked to inadequate (initial) training among staff and limited opportunities for professional development for teachers and principals. Schools and regions with a low socio economic index are often in need of teachers. Headmasters are almost desperate to find teachers and students sometimes remain for long periods without lessons. Even if they find teachers, almost one in two new recruits quits in their first five years because of how challenging their work is. Retaining talent is difficult. Headmasters have to face this reality and are often unprepared for it. They need new skills to recruit teachers, to support them during their first years of employment and to establish school management systems that provide new recruits with space for professional development. The project CERTI4Headmasters focused on exchanging experience among Headmasters on best practices to recruit, select and support their new teachers; and how to adapt the way they manage their school to give those new teachers enough room for professional development. Through this Erasmus+ project, we offered headmasters the opportunity to exchange experience between peers and to develop new skills. Three members of the consortium are members of “Teach for All”, a network.of more than 50 organisations, 19 of which are in Europe. These organisations recruit and train graduates and profesionals over a two-year commitment to teach in their nations' high-need classrooms and to exert leadership. We identified for each country an ambassador school, willing to play a leading role in the exchange of experience (organising school visits, leading workshops). Along with the ambassador schools, the three Teach for All partners invited 5 Belgian, 4 German and 2 Slovak school headmasters to join the Expert Committee. The Steering Committee of our Erasmus+ project met at a kick-off meeting in Berlin in October 2018 to organise the structure of the project, to plan three transnational meetings and the collection of information through Online surveys (on support and tutoring of new teachers, on recruiting and selecting new teachers and on training for headmasters). The Steering Committee, the ambassador and the partners schools met at a first mobility meeting in March 2019 to present the first survey results and to develop tools for new teacher support and tutoring. Then, in May 2019 in Berlin, we met again to share results of the second survey and worked on tools for teacher recruitment, staff selection and induction of new teachers. In November 2019, the group met in Brussels to present third survey results to compare headmasters training across Europe and to create an ideal training program accordingly. We also evaluated the products created at the first two meetings in order to make them available on the dissemination platform (https://headmastersupport.eu/) where all deliverables are accessible. With that platform, with all the tools for headmasters and mentors, we expect to have an impact on recruitment, selection, induction and support of beginner teachers and then later, on their disadvantaged students in the schools where they are teaching. Finally, with the help of the fourth Steering Committee partner, EFCoCert, we collected headmasters competencies through the three surveys and thoughout the meetings, we conducted research and created an overview of "Headmaster’s main duties and related competences, knowledge and skills".