"The project ""School INCLUDING democratic changes - promoting self-determination, attitude and responsibility in a societal context"" took a closer look at democratic processes in schools in four countries and provided space for an intensive and in-depth exchange of experiences. We jointly explored what challenges schools have to face to live and promote democratic behaviour actively.Democracy education is a transversal issue in many schools today. Active democracy means participating in social and political opinion-forming processes. The ability to represent and negotiate one's interests, accept other opinions, and find fair solutions to possible conflicts is a prerequisite. This topic also has an essential transnational dimension: at the European level, intercultural aspects also play a role or images of self and others in the respective countries.Educating young people in preparation for life in a democratic society that guarantees fundamental and human rights is an essential task of the school. Democracy is realised in the actions of the individual as well as in living together. The school is in close contact with the evolving society. Shaping, learning and practising in working and living together in everyday school life is an overriding mission at the school as a place of learning. Given the worldwide rise of populism, racism and exclusion, it is even more critical today that schools offer children and young people a protected environment in which all questions can be asked, opinions expressed, and discussions held openly. Only by participating in cultural, social and political life, a person can develop in a self-confident and healthy way. Therefore, the mandate for Democracy education is embedded in the process of democratic school development.The project aimed to develop, test, evaluate jointly, and record tools for communication, cooperation, and didactic implementation in a structured exchange of experience and practice. In the context of school development, the following challenges arise:-Facing change and developing school practice,-understanding democratic school development as a process of innovation,-Enabling experiences of self-efficacy,-initiating and organising age-appropriate situations and educational processes,-taking into account the heterogeneity of learners.We collected tools and processes to promote democratic interaction and searched for a common answer to the challenges of democratic school development. Since there are already numerous methods and tools for democracy education with defined focal points and target groups, we want to meet the mandate for democracy education by embedding it in democratic school development."

Participation in ECEC is considered a crucial factor for socialising children into formal education, and according to the final report “ECEC for children from disadvantaged backgrounds”, commissioned by the European Commission in 2012, ECEC benefits especially the most disadvantaged children, whose gains in cognitive and socio-emotional development are higher than for ‘average’ children. However, according to the report “Support for children with special educational needs”, from the DG for Employment, Social Affairs & Inclusion, these children tend to be less represented in ECEC, due to the lack of adapted environment. In the partner countries, only Slovenia, which acted as a “mentor partner”, has had an adapted provision of education for many years, including additional assistance for inclusive education, and the majority of children with special needs attends mainstream kindergartens and schools. This translates into the Early School Leaving (ESL) rate, which is only of 5%. In Czech Republic, the situation has very recently changed (2017), as a new legislation was passed, according to which the mainstream education should always be the first choice for children with special education needs, and they are legally entitled to receive support. In Spain, the education system is decentralised and regions were asked to develop “Attention to Diversity plans”. However, in the Canary Islands, no specific funding has been allocated to early attention to children with ASD, contrary to other regions such as the Basque Country, the Valencian Community or the Community of Madrid in which an average of 472€ per child is invested for additional support to inclusive education. This policy also translates into the ESL rate, which is of 19% in the Canary Islands, and 8% in the Basque country for example. In the Czech Republic, children with ASD are taken into account but they are usually segregated in separate classes. For both these countries, the ESL rate for disabled people is of 28%, while it is only of 5% for students without any disability. Taking all this into account, the specific objectives of the project were the followings: - Allow preschool teachers to have the necessary knowledge and competences to be able to include children with ASD in the activities of the classroom; - Reduce disparities in learning outcomes between children with and without ASD. The activities were the followings: - Using the partners’ knowledge and experience about inclusive education and ASD to create a report based on observations in schools, and from there create tailored experience-based teacher’s training; - Piloting and testing these outputs in 7 pre-schools. The project particularly resulted in: - The involvement of 27 pre-school teachers in the project’s activities; - 13 EU organisations (partner organisations & associated partners) becoming experts in the inclusion of children with ASD; - An experience-based teachers’ training, available for any interested stakeholder at EU and international level; - 4 multiplier events to disseminate the project’s results and raise awareness on the need for a more inclusive education for children with ASD; - 4 newsletters to inform stakeholders on the progress and results of the project; - 1 impact report comparing the situation of the children in the classroom, before and after the project, and some guidelines on how to use the online training. - 17 press articles or radio/TV interviews or reports. - 1 project website gathering all the information about the project, its results available for download, and its implementation, including contact details of each partner; - 2 signed declarations of local authorities willing to support the further exploitation of project’s results in the future; - Raised awareness to authorities about the need for inclusion of children with ASD in ECEC. At EU level, this project increased the quality of education Europe by making available two highly innovative intellectual outputs to encourage the take-up of initiatives to improve the inclusion of children with ASD.

The analysis of target groups at each location, which were carried out preliminarily, revealed that the following critical issues should be addressed: a) Fragmentation of educational systems at different level (split ECEC systems as well as the split between pre- and primary school) produces discontinuity in pedagogical approaches and practice implemented within such institutions; b) Children are required to make great effort to adapt to a new relational and learning environment during transitions from one setting to another; c) The above mentioned has negative repercussions on children's learning and socialising experiences which, in turn, have a detrimental impact on their school achievements on the long term; d) Children belonging to vulnerable/marginalised groups are particularly at risk of experiencing negative transitions which lead to lasting relational difficulties and poor educational performance; e) Practitioners and teachers are rarely supported to develop new practices for smoothening transitions. Due to this background, general objectives of the project were: 1) To ensure a good start in education for all children, by enhancing the quality of ECEC and by ensuring that the benefits of ECEC are carried on to other school education levels; 2) To support teachers in adopting new methods and tools for dealing with complex classroom realities and diversified groups of learners. Within this framework, the specific objectives of the project were: 1) To examine the existing transition practices with different focuses at each project location in order to take into account diversified needs of target groups in each context; 2) To involve teachers, families and local stakeholder in designing innovative practices for smoothening transitions, with special attention paid to the school success of children facing complex situations (e.g. socio-economic disadvantage) and to the engagement of families at risk of social exclusion (e.g. Roma); 3) To increase the competence of ECEC/school professionals by involving them in action-research and experimentation projects, with the support provided by experienced researchers; 4) To promote educational innovation of ECEC and school institutions by experimenting new pedagogical approaches and educational methodologies that support children – especially those who are most at risk of school failure – in facing successfully transition processes; 5) To identify principles of good practices that could contribute to transnational exchange and learning as well as to the improvement of educational policies at local, regional, national and EU level. The partnership consisted of 10 partners from 4 countries - university/research/training organisations as well as ECEC/school institutions: ERI and OS Tisina (Slovenia); UNIBO and DD Vignola (Italy); Pen Green Research Base, Rockingham Primary School, Our Lady of Walsingham Catholic Primary School (United Kingdom); VBJK, Mezennestje Day Care Centre and Kolva kindergarden (Belgium). At the very beginning of the project implementation, there was change in the partnership structure (Studfall Junior School has left the partnership and Our Lady of Walsingham Catholic Primary School has joined the partnership).Main activities: 1) Research pertaining early years transitions and educational continuity across different settings; 2) Elaboration and experimentation of innovative pedagogical approaches and educational strategies that support children’s transitions along a continuum of learning experiences; 3) Dissemination of the project’s findings and its educational resources, both in national and international debates (practitioner’s conferences, academic and policy-making fora) contributing to the advancement of transitions practices in Europe. The results: 1) Desk research pertaining early years transitions and educational continuity (Output 1: comprehensive literature review mapping and analysing empirical studies focusing on transitions across home, early childhood settings, preschool and primary school carried out within EU Member States); 2) Development and experimentation of innovative pedagogical approaches and educational strategies for improving transition practices in contexts of socio-cultural diversity (Outputs 2, 3, 4 and 5: in-depth case studies involving research institutions along with childcare, preschool and primary school institutions at each country location); 3) Elaboration and dissemination of detailed guidelines contributing to the advancement of transitions practice in Europe and beyond (Output 6); 4) Elaboration and dissemination of educational resources and training materials (Output 7: Training Kit illustrating some methods that were used in the START professional learning communities for discussing and improving educational transition practice).The impact is mostly linked to the new pedagogical approaches, educational methodologies and practice-based research tools.

<< Objectives >>General objective is ensuring professional development through green education. We will aim in:improving digital competences of kindergartenProfessionals;considering equal opportunities;raising awareness on different educational systems andpractices in different kindergartens;improving competencies to reflect on practices;improving professionals’ competencies on ensuringquality education;raising awareness on the importance of digitalcompetencies and green education possibilities.<< Implementation >>The following activities will be achieved:WP2TrainingWebinarVideosWP3Building and updating the platformPilot testing of the platformDeveloping guidelines for reflectionWP4Preparation of study visitsStudy visits in Belgium, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, N Macedonia, Romania, Slovenia and SerbiaWP5Communication and dissemination planKindergartens post on European School Education PlatformOnline dissemination eventDissemination on partners’ websites, social media and conferences<< Results >>Training on improving digital competenciesWebinar on improving digital competenciesKindergarten videosGuidelines for reflectionVirtual space (platform) will be builtCommunication and dissemination plan;Posts of kindergarten professionals about the project, virtual study visits etc. on the European School Education Platform;International online dissemination eventDissemination of project activities and results

All European countries now issue official educational guidelines to improve settings and provision. However, in around half of the European countries, these guidelines are restricted to settings for children over 3 years old (Eurydice Policy Brief ECEC 2014).Unitary ECEC systems are found to be more effective in terms of the organisation of services and quality assurance, whereas split systems tend to weaken the provision of high quality ECEC, because governance processes are more complicated due to the fragmentation of administrative responsibilities (key principles of a Quality Framework for ECEC [ET2020 WG ECEC]).Lack of unitary guidelines (0-6) affects reflections on three main areas of the ECEC provision: (i) accessibility, (ii) curricula and (iii) monitoring.NEMO project will impact on all this. A diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) is usually provided around the age of three and usually follows a developmental delay in children’s linguistic skills. So ASD seems to be a matter of 3-6 education systems. But it is not. Indeed, clear signs of impairments in the social skills that can lead to ASD can be seen and read much earlier, during embodied and prelinguistic practices between infants and caregivers, when the toddler is between 9 and 18 months old. Our methodology will help ECEC teachers to detect clear signs of possible future disorders of social skills, which may later lead to a diagnosis of ASD, through the observation of prelinguistic interactions between caregivers and infants and will develop in-service trainings on monitoring practices, focusing on the monitoring of toddlers’ experience of ECEC. Early detection will allow for the creation of new educational methods and tools that will improve the capacity of ASD children. Our project will show how the combination of pre-linguistic screening methodologies and effective teaching methods can reduce the gap between neurotypical and ASD children, both at the cognitive and educational levels. The combination of early observation of toddlers (0-3) and a series of educational interventions (0-6) will raise awareness about the need for a unitary system (0-6) and for a set of policies aimed at creating this type of organisation.NEMO project pursues the following objectives:(i)To Allow preschool teachers to have the necessary knowledge and competences in order to be able to access children affected by ASD in the activities of the classroom;(ii)To introduce and recommend pre-primary teachers curricula into a unified system ISCED 0 (0 - 6 years), taking into account ASD children needs.(iii)To introduce and recommend monitoring tools and monitoring framework to create greater coherence in monitoring practices.The project is coordinated by University of Bologna and the partnership foresees 4 Universities, a Research Institute, an association of national ECEC teachers and ECEC services coordinators and a NGO for the ASD people care. The partnership involves organizations both from split and unitary ECEC systems, in order to make comparison reports within ECEC monitoring and curriculum subjects;The activity foresees a wide European research on pre-linguistic phase observation methodologies, ICT tools to enhance ASD children, ECEC monitoring systems and ECEC curricula.Through a Joint Staff Training Event the participants will acquire the necessary competences to implement the pilot versions of ICT tools and methodologies to enhance the access of ASD children in ECEC services.The involvement of local ECEC services in the testing phases and the feedbacks collected from ECEC teachers, NEMO partners will realize the following outputs:1)Teacher Training Courses on Pre-linguistic observation and early ASD evaluation;2)European Report on Frameworks and Recommendations for ECEC 0-6 Monitoring system implementation;3)Toolkit ICT tools for children with ASD;4)0-6 Teachers curricula guidelines;The local implementation and the European level of the dissemination will allow the project to reach the following impact: -Enhance monitoring service quality in Europe;-Spread best practices of monitoring qualities;-Most effective instruments and tools for monitoring children development outcomes;-Tools to allow ASD children to get access to ECEC services properly;-Innovative pre-linguistic phase observation methodologies.- Support curriculum guidelines developments at national levels, in order to successfully nurture children’s cognitive and socio-emotional development, thereby maximising their gains from ECEC attendance.The Output will be exploited by Universities for their master’s degrees and by European ECEC services after the end of the project. The Output will encourage European policy makers in charge for domestic ECEC systems to widen their monitoring and curricula guidelines into a unitary perspective including the innovative methodologies and tools developed by the project.