School Leadership Coaching and Mentoring Erasmus Project

Project Title

School Leadership Coaching and Mentoring

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for school education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2017

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; Quality Improvement Institutions and/or methods (incl. school development)

Project Summary

This two-year project, which was led by one of the main Headteacher organisations in England and Wales, addressed the problem of how to improve the performance of school leaders, particularly in their first few years of leadership. It built a partnership of six organisations from six countries, all of whom had direct influence on the practice of school leaders. The overall aim was to develop an induction, coaching and mentoring programme for newly appointed school leaders, which exploited the proven expertise and capacity of experienced and recently retired members of partner organisations/associations. The partner organisations were in a unique position to exploit this expertise and already had a clear picture of need at a national level. Three of them had a dedicated ‘retired members section’ to their organisations, which enabled the retired members to keep in touch with developments. All partner organisations had substantial experience of offering professional development. The objectives were to: • establish a database in partner countries of high quality recently retired successful school leaders and select a team of trainers • audit the priority needs of new school leaders across the partnership • set up an online platform about the project and to host the resources • create a coaching and mentoring programme for new school leaders • train the trainers • pilot the coaching and mentoring programme • evaluate and finalise the resources • create a set of case studies • disseminate and promote the resources • expand the programme into other countries There is much room for improvement to professionalise school leadership, to support current school leaders and to make school leadership an attractive career for future candidates. School leadership is a priority for the EU. This project focused on how to up-skill school leaders, particularly in their early years of leadership. This is seen as a priority in the ET 2020 agenda if progress to meet targets on school performance is to be accelerated. The project had a number of main stages each with their own milestones and indicators and was divided into 3 sets of Intellectual Outputs. These were: • An Integrated Platform, to host the project website, online resources and virtual community and network building tool • A coaching and mentoring programme for new school leaders and a set of pilot training modules • A set of final downloadable training modules for coaches, mentors and newly appointed school leaders, supported by an e-handbook The outcomes have been welcomed by members of the organisations and have been adopted into practice in the longer term.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 246792 Eur

Project Coordinator

National Association of Headteachers & Country: UK

Project Partners

• ANP associazione nazionale dirigenti pubblici e alte professionalità della scuola
• National Association of Principals and Deputy Principals
• DRUSTVO RAVNATELJ
• EUROPEAN SCHOOL HEADS ASSOCIATION
• VLVO Vereniging Leidinggevenden Vlaams Onderwijs