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.

The project e-Management of multidisciplinary projects for secondary schools aimed to solve the need of partner schools to create learning contexts for their pupils (11-15 ages) in order to prepare them for life and to strengthen the cooperation between the school-family-community through exchange best practices and cooperation between teachers.The project objectives, for 722 pupils and 92 teachers, aim at:1.Elaborating and steering the European curriculum The Management of Multidisciplinary Projects and of the support materials, provided to the targeted pupils and teachers, in a digitally form, in English and Mother Tongues.2.Optimizing the designed learning resources, due to the creation of an e-learning platform in order to deliver the curriculum and to use Google Drive tools.3.Developing the pupils’ skills to create, implement and asses a multidisciplinary project, beginning from a real need/problem of the pupils, school or community, through the common design and implementation of 5 multidisciplinary projects concerning the social relationships and communication, healthy lifestyle, violence, cyber bullying and human rights.4.Developing the pupils’ key competences (communication in both maternal and English languages, digital, social and civic skills, initiative spirit and entrepreneurship, cultural awareness and expression) by covering of the European curriculum and implementing the multidisciplinary projects.Partners were 6 secondary schools: 4 public schools from Czech Republic, Latvia, Romania, Slovakia and 2 private schools in Turkey. In the 2nd project year, one of the private schools withdrew from objective reasons.In 1st project year, teachers attended a training course to use Google Drive and TwinSpace and to prepare for the joint development of the curriculum. Then they created intellectual output of the project -the new curriculum The Management of Multidisciplinary Projects (starting to the common contents of national curriculas corelate with identified needs) and related teaching materials: 1 kit for teachers and one for pupils (15 lesson plans and annexes: course supports, PPTs, worksheets and evaluation) using Google Drive.The curriculum was piloted on a target group of 150 pupils (25/school), through extracurricular activities in the Club e-Management of Multidisciplinary Projects. They worked in teams an wrote 6 multidisciplinary projects focus on solving real joint needs (each school to coordinate one project). In exchange of groups of pupils, they have improved and made final form of projects and assessed them according to common criteria: Fight against Cyberbullying, Face 2 Face, Healthy mind in a healthy body, Learn about your rights, Stop violence at schools, Multi-Cultural Cafe: The Cup of Friends.In the 2nd project year, the 6 projects were implemented, the kits were improved and transferred to a Moodle platform within the course e-Management of Multidisciplinary Projects, and the curriculum has been tested and implemented similarly to the other target group of students. Besides the Club, in Romania there were optional courses in 4 gymnasium classes, and in Slovakia were subject for Class 9.Teachers collaborated to create and apply appropriate joint teaching-learning strategies trough multidisciplinary project-based approaches, to asses pupils' key skills in real contexts. They implemented effective and reflexive assessment practices, with permanent feedback focus on performance-based assessment methods: projects, group/peer work, presentations, interviews, role plays, reflective diaries, e/portfolios.The curriculum and 6th projects were also posted on Google Drive and each school site, and pupils portfolios and diaries were posted on TwinSpace, Facebook group.At the multiplier event the symposium e-Education for Key Competences (Romania, June 2017) was attended by 151 teachers from the pre-university education, out of which 28 foreigners.The project impact demonstrated that all pupils developed the skills of project writing and management and have show an increased interest for engaging in solving the needs of their life. Also, they have greatly improved their social, civic, digital skills, communication in their native language and English. All teachers improved the ability to apply multidisciplinary approaches that promotes learning in an environment rich in technology and based on solving real problems.The long-term benefits bring the improvement of the internationalization strategy of schools, because they have the curriculum which allows teachers to be able to offer their students a quality education closer to life, solutions to meet the challenges of daily living and to manage effectively and reflectively their learning, being more independent and self-confident. All partners planned to use the Curriculum for extracurricular activities or as a subject in regular curriculum, and as a guideline for new projects -eTwinning, Pupils' School Council.

The project will focus on improving the well being of staff and pupils in schools in Wales, Romania, Poland and France. Altogether there will be over 600 children and their families, over 65 teachers and teaching assistants and a number of specialists in various fields (doctors, psychologists, artists, people from the community, school counsellors) involved in the project. The main aims of the project are to open the world up to children where travel is not always possible, many of the pupils come from low income families with high levels of unemployment. Without the Erasmus+ money the children would not be able to experience life in other countries first hand. The project will add an international dimension to the school curriculum and develop an international outlook of the pupils, staff and families. The project will develop digital citizenship, provide the opportunities to share, develop and transfer innovative practices between schools. It will also enhance pupils’ and teachers’ intercultural awareness and understanding. The range of projects planned will focus on improving pupils' well being whilst also developing ICT, literacy and numeracy skills. During short-term joint staff training events the different programmes to promote and well being already been used in the schools will be shared and impact discussed. The effectiveness of emotional support and any systems or programmes in the schools will be assessed and plans put in place to address shortcomings. During planning meetings the learning environments of each school will be scrutinised and evaluated, action plans will be put into place identifying how they can be improved and how pupils can be involved in these improvements. There will be four short-term joint staff training events for teachers. It is important that one of these are held at each of the partner schools so that full evaluations of each environment and the systems in place can be observed first hand. Each lead teacher will be present during the short-term joint staff training events to plan each thematic project with well being at the heart of each one. Following these planning meetings each school will run a project with the children. Each project will be planned with a focus on well being and will focus on addressing areas for development raised at the staff training events. These will be shared using a wide range of digital technologies. Pupils and staff of each school will be continuously developing friendships and strengthening relationships with staff and pupils of partner schools. These activities will be shared demonstrating how digital technology can be used effectively to share information around the world, increasing the skills and competences among all staff.They would be discussing the projects and constantly sharing their work through eTwining, SKYPE, powerpoints, E books, I Movie etc. In the second year of the project short-term exchanges of groups of pupils will take place. Visits to partner schools will provide groups of pupils with first hand experiences to immerse themselves in the culture of other countries. This will give children who have never been abroad the opportunity to experience different countries and cultures first hand. During these visits pupils will create blogs to share their experiences and new knowledge with all other pupils and their families back home. We envisage the results and impact will be positive. Through analysis of baseline activities progress in attainment made of targeted groups ICT, literacy and numeracy skills will increase significantly. Pupils will have made positive developments in their cultural awareness. The lives of children, many from deprived areas where travel is not possible lives will have been enhanced by the project. Levels of well being, self esteem and self worth will improve and their socio-emotional skills will have improved. Programs aimed at personal development of pupils, their self-knowledge and their well-being at school will have a positive impact. There will be long term benefits. The strong links made with other schools will continue, using digital technology schools will be able to continue joint partnership working and pupils will be able to continue to communicate and share work. Lesson resources planned and used would be uploaded on a platform so all schools can deliver and develop them in the future. The sharing of good practice and innovative teaching methods will have provided teachers with new ideas and skills to use in their future teaching. Teachers involved in the planning and delivery of project will disseminate their findings, the good practice and new skills learnt with other teachers in their schools.

The conclusions of European Council and European Commission as well as strategy EUROPA 2020 strongly pointed out the need for development of quality schools, programs, interventions in the Member States to meet the objectives: improvement of basic and transversal skills of students and school staff, improvement of Early years Education and Care, to combat early school leaving, social exclusion and poverty. The education and training systems often do not provide sufficient targeted support for pupils to cope with emotional, social or educational difficulties and to remain in education and training. We, as practitioners, are strongly aware of impact emotional and social competences have on personal development and school performance from pre-school age onward .The first target group of the project were children and pupils. This project most relevant objective was to improve emotional and social competences of children and students with positive effect on their key competences, prosocial behaviour and academic results. Secondly, we aimed to improve inclusive school practice by special focus and participation of students with fewer opportunities facing different obstacles. We expected our approach to have positive effect on early school leaving in the future. The second target group were the teachers and other specialised school staff. The project aimed to enhance and develop their professional knowledge, skills and experience by learning and using the innovative teaching method, as well as change in their personal beliefs about specific problems in their work with students. They also had the opportunity to improve their communication on foreign languages, digital competences, intercultural and personal competences. Third target group were parents, their participation was vital for this kind of interventions and the project aimed at improving parents understanding of social and emotional factors influencing the academic results and children behaviour as well as helping the children in the process. Forth target group were professionals in education at local, regional, national and EU level. The project aimed to raise awareness of the topic, transfer knowledge and experience, exchange good practice, derive new similar projects. Next target group was the authorities in education and policy makers and we desired to raise their awareness about the topic, to inform them about effective and quality school programs of this type, foster opportunities to spread this program to other schools and educative environments. We expected building an European identity of schools, internalization development by integrating European dimension in school activities and curriculum. We estimated 3500 participants to have direct and indirect benefit of this project including about 300 participants with fewer opportunities. Partnership included five pre-primary and primary schools from Spain, Croatia, United Kingdom, Italy and Romania. Three partners (Spain, Italy and Romania) had a lot of experience in European Union funded partnership projects. Croatian and UK partner participated in these kind of project for the first time. All schools had experience in inclusive practice but different models are applied and that is the added value for this project. Project objectives were reached by development, implementation and evaluation of the learner-centered approach based on Social and Emotional learning (SEL). Project activities were integrated in regular class curriculum and extra-curricular activities and developed gradually by teachers and pupils from 4-11 years of age. Main activities started with transnational project meeting and Training event organised in Spain, followed by transnational project meeting every six months and finalized with Multiplier Event held in Croatia. The evaluation and assessment was carried out in all project phases, especially by the partner project leads and the lead Co-ordinator, an educational psychologist. The main intellectual output was a Teaching Manual : Ways to SMILE : a Handbook for Teachers and an accompanying Emotions Pictionary in five languages. We also created several other tangible materials (Webpage,eTwinning project, School Mascots, Project Logo, Portfolio Books, SMILE Song, Smile Corners , School Movies, School Performances and Power Point presentations). Impact was attained on personal level (pupils, teachers, parents), school level (innovative curriculum, school climate, interpersonal relations, school image and position in local and regional communities), community level ( local, regional and, in some partner countries, national educational organisations and authorities were introduced to our methodology and results). We expect longer-term benefits because social-emotional learning is strongly supported by our school's headmasters and school curriculum. The Handbook is downloadable, open educational resource and many schools showed significant interest for our project activities.

We successfully completed this exciting 2 year project enabling creative arts specialists go into schools across the 3 partner regions to up-skill teachers and develop teacher competences in the delivery of creative arts. Through active engagement, targeted training, effective support and exchange of good practice, locally and internationally, teachers in participating schools are effecting change and impacting curriculum delivery. There were four partner countries, Wales, Spain, Romania and Turkey. Coordinating partners from each region were local authorities supporting schools in raising standards through international programmes such s Erasmus+. Pupils and teachers were from primary and secondary schools in both mainstream and special education. Additional partners were from creative arts organisations supporting the work throughout and providing much of the training.Pupil voice has been an important element of this project. Pupils have been given the opportunity to share experiences and work with teachers thus contributing to the success of the outputs. In each region, we organised comprehensive training for participating teachers. The training included developing skills in embedding creativity across the curriculum aiming to raise standards in teaching and learning across the curriculum.Teachers identified areas of learning in which they hoped to see improvement. These included:Writing for purposeProblem solvingSpeaking and listeningBasic numeracyPlanning and evaluatingWorld issuesand they approached these through a wide range of creative arts including:Mixed media artworkSculpture Story tellingDanceSingingWeavingCostume designThis Creative Arts project has been an effective tool empowering students including those with additional learning needs through creativity. The impact has been extensive. Pupils have demonstrated increased competence in the 5 creative habits of mind, in wellbeing and in attendance. There has been a notable improvement in confidence in front of peers, in pupils’ own abilities and a willingness to try new things.There has been the anticipated rise in standards evidenced by a positive impact on end of year tracking and targets. Pupils have shown improvement too in application of skills by transferring their learning to real life situations.Staff too have benefitted by demonstrating a readiness to try new approaches and allowing for pupil led learning. Teachers are more confident in delivering Creative Arts based learning and in using Creative Arts to enhance the whole curriculum, tailoring creative learning for all learnersAll participating teaches have gained an understanding of developments in curricular in partner countries, have developed an understanding and can utilise, international approaches from partner countries. In this way, they have profited from specialist professional development, re-energising their teaching.