Focusing on EU priorities:- improving the attainment of young people, particularly those at risk of early school leaving and with low basic skills - greater understanding and responsiveness to social, linguistic and cultural diversity- more active participation in society - improved competences, linked to their professional profiles (training for the teachers, who work in multicultural classesthis project with a unique focus of study for all participating authorities, aims to tackle challenges within our education systems. We have seen a huge increase in the number of ethnic minority groups in our regions with many of those families have little or no experience of education and the importance in education for their children. This is coupled with a growth in the number of disengaged family amongst our indigenous population. Despite work already being undertaken in our regions we recognise that more needs to be done as many families are still not engaged which is impacting on life chances for their children. This project pools our resources and ideas to tackle these difficult to reach families and their children and through collaborative working, teacher training and developing student voice we believe we can work together to improve aspiration and engagement amongst the target family groups our schools have identified.Our regions support numerous communities who live here, work and attend schools especially since the widening of the European Union and we face challenges within our education systems. We aim to work towards overcoming some of the following issues through this project:1. Families - inadequate contact with parents regardless of ethnic group2. Pupils - inadequate provision for ethnic minority pupils' and peer group isolation; cultural and ethnic discrimination; shortage of school programs focused on communities and support for indigenous families whose children are at risk of becoming NEET (Not in Education, Employment or Training)3. Teachers and schools - schools which are not ready to meet the challenges of integration of pupils from varying backgrounds and lack of support for schools, teaching and non-teaching staff working with ethnic minorities.. According to the „Common European Framework for competences and qualifications of teachers” document teachers should know how to promote mobility and cooperation in Europe as well as mutual respect and understanding of cultures, have an understanding of a balance between cultural differences and common features, and be competent to work in multicultural and socially differentiated classroom, we aim to prepare teachers to meet these requirements.Parents will not come into schools for a variety of reasons. Many parents have had little or no experience of education or an experience which has left them fearful. Educating parents and families is as important a role in education as education itself and we wish to evoke belief and enthusiasm for education amongst our pupils' families through this project plan. Where this project will add an exciting and innovative approach, different to programmes already in place in our countries, is that this project will involve expertise from professionals in 3 counties pulling together the best practices and innovative approaches from our regions. The 3 local authorities in each region are fully committed to addressing the themes of this project and have already gone some way towards introducing intervention and the nominated coordinators have extensive experience in managing international projects. The collective skills of local authority professionals will ensure the quality of project outcomes and goals and objectives are met.All other associated partners have been carefully selected to provide expertise that is not available through the services provided by the local authorities. In each case the 12 schools are experiencing challenges in engaging families and a broad variety of experience allows learning opportunities for all participating staff. Some schools have nominated Family Engagements officers and their expertise will be shared and similar opportunities in participating schools will be identified.The planned activities include the production of training materials for teachers and parents. Parents and their children will be engaged in a variety of activities specifically designed to attract and engage other parents within the individual school contexts. Professionals from all organisations will take part in transnational meeting to ensure objectives are being met. Teachers will participate in job shadowing opportunities in partner countries following which they will receive Europass certificates providing staff with valuable additions to CVs in line with EU guidelines. The final output will be good practice guidelines bringing together all aspects of the project in a comprehensive guide for other professionals wishing to engage in similar activities and ensuring sustainability

<< Objectives >>This project will guide teachers about how they can integrate technology into the curriculum creating a more accessible learning environment. So it will contribute enhancing digital integration in learning, teaching and training at various levels,strengthening the profile of the teaching profession.The project will give high quality learning opportunities because teacher and school administrators' perceptions on the value of technology integration into the curriculum<< Implementation >>During the project, 4 TPMs and 5 LTTs will be implemented.And blended learning platform,blended learning guidebook and ict tools for blended learnig toolkit will be developed.<< Results >>with our project we aim to reduce failure rates, improve learning, and boost engagement. Blended learning combines the best aspects of face-to-face teaching and online instruction in ways that enable students to learn at their own pace.By using a combination of digital instruction and one-on-one face time, students will be able to work on their own with new concepts which frees teachers up to circulate and support individual students who may need individualized attention

High-quality teaching is determined to a great extent on what teachers know and are able to do. In its Communication on School Development and Excellent Teaching For a Great Start in Life, the European Commission underlines the importance of teacher education for teaching quality, pointing out the role that collaborative work and career-long professional development can play.The Commission highlights the need for CPD to be accessible, affordable and relevant, and underscores the positive effect of involving schools and teachers in defining CPD policies.There are some challenges encountered while providing CPD to the teachers. The first one is the way it is perceived. Teachers often see CPD as a top-down process normally run by school management. Indeed, recent surveys would tend to back this position with head teachers generally dominating the decision-making process within schools (Friedman and Phillips, ibid). In this way, the benefits are often viewed in terms of management goals rather than for the individuals concerned. There is a growing awareness that it is imperative to tailor CPD to the needs of employees and make it much more about the personal development of individuals within an organisation and not just for the benefit of the organisation itself (Dent et al., 2008).The second problem is the trainers themselves or rather the information provided to the trainers in preparation for their courses is another matter. Since some organisations do very little to highlight where training is required and what skills their workforce lack or need, it is hardly surprising that outside trainers are not able to respond to genuine needs of the participant teachers.The third problem is the outsourcing of CPD is that trainers come in, do their training and then disappear; the training tends to be superficial (Weston, 2013). There is no back up, no planned system of evaluation of impact. The problem of evaluation is critical from the employer's perspective and a lack of demonstrable impact means that some organisations perceive CPD as an additional expense with very little return.In order to overcome these challenges with the help of this project we will focus on improving teachers’ competences in 9 competence areas which are necessary for teachers in 21st Century. We will work with teachers to develop, deliver, evaluate and adapt content in each region ensuring that any of the final outputs are relevant, targeted and suitable for each context.

Over the last 10 years newspapers have been reporting the difficulty education authorities are having when recruiting headteachers and the situation is getting worse. This project aims to identify areas of extreme pressure by discovering new approaches to school leadership. We are going to look at why highly qualified teachers, possessing the skills and competences to perform as excellent headteachers are not applying for these roles. However, the problem of retaining headteachers is also at crisis point. In the UK in 2018 a national newspaper reported that a third of headteachers leave the profession and this problem is reflected worldwide.So what is it about leading a school that has become so unattractive and unmanageable for those who, previously, were both successful and enjoying the demanding role of headship?In this ever-changing society wellbeing is high on the agenda. Wellbeing of pupils and teaching staff is a major concern of all school leaders. However, what of the school leaders themselves? Are improvements to the wellbeing of our headteachers the key to unlocking some of the problems experienced by current and aspiring leaders? And who is responsible for change? Can a school change from the inside and what lessons can be learned from successful heads of schools?The project has four areas of focus:-Accountability of headteachers -Management of funding available to schools-Mental health and wellbeing of staff - teachers and headteachers-School leadership policies and procedures - the role of the headteacher on a daily basisEach area of focus will involve in-depth research across regions and professionals will exchange good practice leading to the planned intellectual outputs designed by educators for educators and for sharing with local and national governments. We will research effective practice, implement change and transform our schools into learning spaces for all, staff and pupils alike. Where headteachers can develop in safe spaces where they can grow professionally alongside teaching staff and the pupils in their care.

"Context/Background:An ET2020 priority is to "" Improve the quality and efficiency of education and training"". We intend, through this innovative project, to improve the teaching of a second national language to produce more bilingual speakers through carefully planned classroom materials and teacher guidelines. Added to this is the expectation that we will also successfully teach children a foreign language. We look to find ways of integrating our national languages across the curriculum whilst teaching a foreign language discreetly. We will, as a direct result look at how we are teaching mulitlimgualism in the ""bilinigual-plus-one"" method. Objectives:There are many countries in the EU whereby there are multiple languages spoken on a daily basis. Our focus for this project is a bilingual country - otherwise known as a country whereby two languages hold equal status, but that English remains the main spoken language. Where schools are briefed to teach via a dual language system, in some countries this has had limited success. We have chosen three areas of the EU as examples of this limited success. Wales, Spain and Ireland are known to speak English, Spanish and English respectively. However, there are a number of other languages in Spain which hold equal status. We have chosen the area of Galicia for our study. In Wales, the Welsh language holds equal status to English but is not taught in a way which enables learners to be truly bilingual. The same issue occurs in Ireland with Irish being held in equal status but not necessarily producing fluent speakers. If 50% of Europe (and also the world) is bilingual, this is not reflected in our Welsh and Irish schools and to an extent our Galician ones. Participants and Methodology:We expect around 24 teachers and at least one expert language advisor from our 3 regions to take part in the project. We will begin by researching the current methods of dual language teaching before collaborating to produce guidelines on how to fully integrate a simultaneous approach to bilingualism. We will trial these materials and look at impact on the foreign language being taught. Is this now easier with learners having more language tools to call on at all times? Is the learning now more fluid and unquestioned? How much easier is it to hold a meaningful conversation in two languages, rather than translate one to the other first? We will use our baseline assessment to measure impact throughout the project and, especially at the end. Results and ImpactThroughout the world, bilingualism is a shifting statistic in any case, with many migrants adopting the national language of their host country. In schools throughout Europe at least one foreign language is also taught, therefore we will looking at how this is integrated - is it taught discreetly? Is a foreign language given much less teaching time than a national language? How are the two national languages taught across the curriculum to give them dual status with the school? The EU priority of promoting life long learners means that we much find successful ways to foster learning techniques that will stay with learner past school age. If they enjoy their dual language learning experience, they will be more likely to continue to use both their national languages and will see the benefit of being bilingual into adulthood. The impact we expect to see as a result of this project is a more integrated and innovative approach to language teaching that blends two national languages into all curriculum areas fluidly whilst shifting space for a foreign language to be taught discreetly, but using some of the linguistic skills and tools we are equipping our learners with on the way to true bilingualism. We expect learners to be able to work in dual languages without referring to the lessons as ""language"" lessons. Our core subjects will reflect incidental and subject terminology whilst harnessing linguistic skills to think in two languages simultaneously."