Inspiring school leaders

The Inspriring School Leaders Confernece was held in Cambridge University's St. John's College on 22-24 September 2017. EPA was offered the opportunity to inspire school leaders from all over the world to engage parents for a 21st century school system.

Forum on Leadership Policy on Equity and Learning: Take it to the Students

The Maltese Ministry of Education hosted a conference on school leadership and equity, co-organised by the former European Policy Network on School Leadership (EPNoSL) on 16/17 January 2017. As an active member of the EPNoSL, EPA was offered the opportunity not only to participate, but also to offer input in two workshops on Supporting National Advocacy of Parents’ Associations and Giving Responsibility to Boost Participation. EPA was represented in the event by Brigitte Haider, our Project Manager. You can read her detailed report below.

The conference also offered an opportunity to have a discussion among former network members in order to successfully submit an application for a next financing round for our work on school leadership policy. Since the event the submission was done and now we all keep our fingers crossed for it. EPA is offered a major role in the planned network, together with our regular collaborator, the European School Heads Association, ESHA. The network would be again led by FORTH and we have enjoyed working with them.

Integrating refugees and migrants through education

The Lifelong Learning Platform has published a new policy paper on integrating refugees and migrants through education as a means to build bridges in divided societies. EPA, very much in line with the work we are currently doing to support the inclusion of migrant parents, has contributed to the paper, especially on the need to empower all educators, to involve parents and to have a school leadership approach for achieving this in formal education. Migration internal and external, the refugees, inclusion and integration are hot topics in the EU and nearly all member states, so this is a very timely communication.

Why are parents important? - Ask your teacher and publish the video on #ParentsAndSchools Day

On the second Tuesday of October, this year on 11 October, Europe celebrates the European Day of Parents and Schools since 2002. Initiated by the European Parents’ Association (EPA), this day is used to highlight the importance of parents and teachers working together for the benefit of children by parents’ organisations, often supported by their respective national Ministries of Education.

Parents’ associations gathered together in EPA want to use the occasion of #ParentsAndSchools Day to promote and advocate for the implementation of new policy messages by the European Commission published earlier this year on transforming schools to make them more attractive for students and families alike in order to achieve the EU2020 headline target of reducing early school leaving. These recommendations fundamentally build on the school community, parents, teachers and students taking ownership of learning by actively participating in transforming the school to meet the needs of today’s children as well as preparing them for the challenges of the 21^st century.

New EU policy recommendations on transforming schools focus on parental involvement and child participation

On 7-8 March a conference in Brussels discussed the results of the ET2020 Working Group on Schools Policy – an expert group of policymakers and stakeholders from more than 30 European countries. The Group’s work over the last two years had focused on identifying successful policy approaches to reducing early school leaving and to raising the quality of Initial Teacher Education. The set of new policy recommendations focus very much on parental involvement and child participation, as well as preparing professionals for this. EPA was represented by Eszter Salamon, President, who was invited to participate at the closing plenary round table discussion, together with representatives of other stakeholder groups, of the event.

New EPNoSL publication: Promoting the policy agenda on school leadership from the perspective of equity and learning

Promoting the policy agenda on school leadership from the perspective of equity and learning is developed in the frame of the European Policy Network of School Leadership (EPNoSL) project EPA is part of. Although it focuses mostly on school leaders, head teachers themselves, it can be used as a good tool for training parents for participating in distributed leadership and school leadership in general.

Implementation of competence-based education in a school at all levels:What is the role of the school leader and stakeholders?

Nelly Guet, a former school head, advisor in the field of education and long-time EPA partner shares her presentation with our readers on this topic. (Original presentation was done at the ATEE Hungary conference in Veszprém, 27 June 2014)

Why do we need competence-based education?

Europeans should be more interested in the future of Europe if they want benefits for the youth in their own countries. Those experiencing a high rate of youth unemployment must urgently adopt different measures, otherwise violence, youth unemployment, lack of interest in school, anxiety about the future and lack of confidence will increase among youngsters.

Knowledge is not enough if we want to engage ourselves for more democracy and more equity at school and if we want to prepare our youth for lifelong learning.