SUPERVISING SCHOOLS IN THE 21ST CENTURY: DIGITAL TOOLS AND IMPROVEMENT PLANS Erasmus Project

Project Title

SUPERVISING SCHOOLS IN THE 21ST CENTURY: DIGITAL TOOLS AND IMPROVEMENT PLANS

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 2018

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Early School Leaving / combating failure in education

Project Summary

The demand to offer quality education enabling success for all students has made all European educational systems, their schools and people responsible for them try to design strategies, techniques and tools to better achieve that ultimate goal. For the last twenty years many efforts have been made to develop quality assuring school evaluation procedures and, as a consequence, the implementation of internal and external improvement plans has become one of the key elements for school development in many European countries.
The Project “Supervising Schools in the 21st Century: Digital Tools and Improvement Plans” (SS21DTIP) has seeked to reinforce the improvement processes taking place within schools with the description of procedures and techniques and the creation of tools that have aimed to enable schools to engage with educational evidence and find enhanced teaching, learning and managing strategies. In other words, SS21DTIP has intended to contribute to a unique and innovative insight into school evaluation by assisting schools with what is the centre of effective planning activities, internal evaluation and planning processes.
Bearing in mind all the needs and aims above mentioned, this Project has had the following objectives:
1. Identify dimensions, criteria, strategies and good practices linked to school improvement.
2. Provide inspectorate-of-education bodies and professional staff in charge of supporting schools’ development plans with new perspectives of good practices and approaches toward school improvement.
3. Create an open on-line toolkit to provide those in charge of planning, developing and assessing schools’ improvement plans with criteria, strategies and instruments to do it in an effective way.
4. Provide policy makers and universities with data and information about improvement processes developed in schools linked to partner institutions taking part in this project.
5. Promote the European dimension of all actions and initiatives of this Project.
In order to achieve these objectives, this project has developed four intellectual outputs: A published article on the role of inspectorates supporting schools in data-informed decision making, a report based on five national case studies to identify how improvement plans are being developed, a toolkit to develop data-informed improvement plans and Multilingual Open Online Course in an open access format to develop and distribute training materials on how to plan, implement and assess a school improvement plan.
Four organizations from Spain, Ireland, Bulgaria and Greece have become partners to carry out SS21DTIP: CEYE-JUNTAEX (Consejería de Educación y Empleo- Junta de Extremadura), Dublin City University (DCU), “St. Kliment Odhriski” Sofia University (SU) and RPDE Stereas Elladas. The Inspectorate of Education of Extremadura has among its functions collaborating in the promotion of continuous evaluation by the educational centers, of their own functioning, of the programs that they develop, of the teaching-learning processes they carry out and the results of their students. DCU hosts the Centre for Evaluation, Quality and Inspection (EQI), a multidisciplinary research group examining the impact of evaluation and inspection in education and related fields, and is a designated University Research Centre. Sofia University has brought expertise in the area of school inspection, school improvement and school self- and peer-evaluation and rich experience in case study research. The RDPSE is a decentralized organization of the Ministry of Education, Research & Religious Affairs in Greece with administrative as well as pedagogic responsibilities, in charge of promoting and monitoring the innovations and reformations of the Ministry of Education within the region of Sterea Ellada. All the partners have taken responsibility in the development of the four identified outputs. The entire partnership has contributed to each output and both online and transnational meetings have been held to develop the final products. Committed to transnational usage the products are available in the four partner languages. Besides, a Joint-staff Training Event and a Multiplier Event have been held. The first focused on the importance of adopting a collaborative, whole school and data-informed decision making approach when developing school plans. The Multiplier Event, that was virtually held in a hybrid symposium, focused on disseminating the products of SS21DTIP at regional, national and international level.
SS21DTIP Project has seeked to reinforce the improvement processes taking place within schools by enabling schools to engage with educational evidence, find enhanced teaching, learning and managing strategies and develop effective planning activities, data-informed internal evaluation and planning processes. This will, in the long term, bring a qualitative change to the way school evaluation is developed.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 134207 Eur

Project Coordinator

CONSEJERIA DE EDUCACIÓN Y EMPLEO – JUNTA DE EXTREMADURA & Country: ES

Project Partners

• DUBLIN CITY UNIVERSITY
• SOFIA UNIVERSITY ST KLIMENT OHRIDSKI
• PERIFERIAKI DIEFTHINSI PROTOVATHMIAS AND DEFTEROVATHMIAS EKPEDEFSIS STEREAS ELLADAS