Leadership of School Consortia

The focus of this Strategic Partnership was 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 addressed the Horizontal Priority of… • educators, by strengthening the induction and professional development of multi-institutional school leaders This project addressed the Horizon Erasmus+ School Priority of… • strengthening leadership in education, including the role and profile of school leaders and distributed leadership It brought 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 represented such a structure. The leadership of these more complex structures is more challenging than running a single institution. This project brought together 5 different types of structures from 5 countries to share their practice, common issues and to explore best practice. All the objectives were achieved and a set of case studies has been developed and shared through dissemination activities and online. The case studies were developed through teaching and learning activities, and linked to both the expertise of the schools and the needs of their partners to ensure a clear transfer of innovation. They covered 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