TheMarketForIdeas

This article presents the framework for implementation of a project within the educational system, targeting the development of school organizations by addressing the issue of leadership.

The project is elaborated and implemented within the Erasmus+ program, by an international consortium that consists of the following partners: University Of Newcastle Upon Tyne from Great Britain, edEUcation Ltd from Great Britain, Univerza Na Primorskem Universita Del Litorale from Slovenia, the Bucharest University of Economic Studies (ASE), Romania and European School Heads Association from the Netherlands.

The project title is “Entrepreneurial Competences for School Leadership Teams” and it starts with the assessment of the competences of school leaders and continues, based on it, with the elaboration and implementation of practical training strategies in the field of leadership.

The methodology at the basis of this project brings together the experience and capabilities of this international consortium. A training package has been developed within the project through a modern investigating tool, “professional enquiry”, in order to be able to get the guarantee that the program takes into consideration the real day-to-day issues facing the schools and their leaders and staff.

In this respect, the project assessed the entrepreneurial competencies from the business world and used the knowledge gained to support the school leaders to assess their organizations based on a SWOT analysis and, subsequently, approaching a specific topic to be addressed and solved during the project life cycle by the partner schools.

Achieving this purpose and demonstrating a practical approach involved four schools from primary and secondary education from Romania being included in the project implementation, each school having its own project for change that focused on a real issue. The same approach was shared by the other consortium partners, in the UK, Finland and Slovenia.

During this process, permanent communication and assistance have been provided by ASE Bucharest and its international partners, in order to guarantee that the best approaches for developing the leadership competencies of the personnel involved from each school were implemented.

The entrepreneurial competencies targeted four field of actions considered vital for the functionality and development of school leadership: Strategic Thinking & Vision, Team Building, Personnel Management & Development, Communication & Negotiation Skills, Financial resources mobilization & Optimization.

It is obvious that leadership within the school should be a priority around the globe, having in mind that good education is a major determinant for a healthy society. We see that many policies at both national and international level are trying to give an impetus to education, in their efforts towards modernizing societies and creating a better world.

That’s why this project is designed to focus the attention on schools evolution and on one of the major determinant of their performances: the leaders. And when we talk about leaders, we do not refer only to top positions in the schools, but to all persons that could have a significant contribution to improve the students’ life, the cooperation within and outside the schools and the fulfilment of school’s stakeholder expectations.

The project was a complex one and the excellent cooperation among the project members resulted in a wide range of valuable results and experiences that we are confident will also ensure the sustainability of the project.