"A lot of children lack the education, support, and opportunity they need to thrive. The obstacles these children face — poverty, hunger, discrimination, trauma, and school systems that do not provide them with the education they need — are overwhelming. And when all these children aren’t learning, it affects us all, perpetuating poverty, dividing societies, and weakening economies. The European Commission promotes the role of education in fighting inequalities and promoting social inclusion. Sustainable Development Goal 4 is aiming at Ensuring inclusive and quality education for all. High quality education for all is also a key EU priority. As mentioned in the Education & Training Monitor of 2017, the organisation of a school system can significantly affect the social and economic outcomes of an education system. Headmasters therefore play a central role in the quality and equity of school education as they are responsible for supporting teachers’ professional development and competencies. Lack of high quality education is also often linked to inadequate (initial) training among staff and limited opportunities for professional development for teachers and principals. Schools and regions with a low socio economic index are often in need of teachers. Headmasters are almost desperate to find teachers and students sometimes remain for long periods without lessons. Even if they find teachers, almost one in two new recruits quits in their first five years because of how challenging their work is. Retaining talent is difficult. Headmasters have to face this reality and are often unprepared for it. They need new skills to recruit teachers, to support them during their first years of employment and to establish school management systems that provide new recruits with space for professional development. The project CERTI4Headmasters focused on exchanging experience among Headmasters on best practices to recruit, select and support their new teachers; and how to adapt the way they manage their school to give those new teachers enough room for professional development. Through this Erasmus+ project, we offered headmasters the opportunity to exchange experience between peers and to develop new skills. Three members of the consortium are members of “Teach for All”, a network.of more than 50 organisations, 19 of which are in Europe. These organisations recruit and train graduates and profesionals over a two-year commitment to teach in their nations' high-need classrooms and to exert leadership. We identified for each country an ambassador school, willing to play a leading role in the exchange of experience (organising school visits, leading workshops). Along with the ambassador schools, the three Teach for All partners invited 5 Belgian, 4 German and 2 Slovak school headmasters to join the Expert Committee. The Steering Committee of our Erasmus+ project met at a kick-off meeting in Berlin in October 2018 to organise the structure of the project, to plan three transnational meetings and the collection of information through Online surveys (on support and tutoring of new teachers, on recruiting and selecting new teachers and on training for headmasters). The Steering Committee, the ambassador and the partners schools met at a first mobility meeting in March 2019 to present the first survey results and to develop tools for new teacher support and tutoring. Then, in May 2019 in Berlin, we met again to share results of the second survey and worked on tools for teacher recruitment, staff selection and induction of new teachers. In November 2019, the group met in Brussels to present third survey results to compare headmasters training across Europe and to create an ideal training program accordingly. We also evaluated the products created at the first two meetings in order to make them available on the dissemination platform (https://headmastersupport.eu/) where all deliverables are accessible. With that platform, with all the tools for headmasters and mentors, we expect to have an impact on recruitment, selection, induction and support of beginner teachers and then later, on their disadvantaged students in the schools where they are teaching.Finally, with the help of the fourth Steering Committee partner, EFCoCert, we collected headmasters competencies through the three surveys and thoughout the meetings, we conducted research and created an overview of ""Headmaster’s main duties and related competences, knowledge and skills""."

Happy and healthy kids all around Europe. That was the first idea of 3 schools experienced in international projects. 2 new partners were offered their experience so they created the partnership of 5 schools across Europe, from the north to the south and the east to the west. We are 5 partners from very different backgrounds: 2 from rural areas, 2 from small cities and 1 from bigger city, all of which makes this project innovative. The project is directed mainly at children in primary and secondary education and the diversity comes from the fact that there are kids from different nationalities and from families of very different social-economic status as well as some minority groups. The priorities of the project are directly related to the objectives set:-To foster the inclusion of students from poor backgrounds and with learning difficulties as equal citizens. To encourage them to become aware of other realities and to consider a future life abroad as a possibility. -To raise awareness of the fact that contact with other cultures, religions and beliefs enriches and makes us more tolerant and understanding of others.-To promote collaborative teaching-learning.-To increase digital competence which is absolutely essential in today’s world. -A healthy person is a basic element of a healthy Europe (mental and physical health of an individual, good habits, healthy school, home and world environment, the ability to make decisions based on the critical thinking)-To foster the love of foreign languages, to aid communication at work, socially or for fun. Activities will be organized to promote the project: leaflets, a logo competition, an informative video, a showcase in the schools to show how the project is developing and dissemination through a range of websites. Other activities will focus on reaching the proposed objectives. Five blocks of work have been chosen: mental health and changing habits, healthy food, sport activities, environment and socializing; all of which will help us attain our main objective, that of social inclusion. The final product for each of these topics will be made during each of the visits to five partnering countries, which in itself will help us learn about the culture of other countries and will offer us a broader vision of Europe. A third group of activities will be aimed at assessment, both of the project itself and its impact and sustainability. These include the initial and final questionnaires, interviews, quantification of the visits and interaction with the project websites.The methodology is primarily collaborative: peer-teaching/learning, mixed-ability group work and, changing habits at schools and in families. In the cooperation with school parliaments, there will be innovative proposals to school educational programmes. Most of the activities will be carried out using ICTs as the main tool, which will foment digital competence. The final products will be published both in English and in the participants’ language so as to increase the love of languages and language competence.The tangible results will be: eTwinning website, a project logo, a presentation of participants, a video blog describing visits, a book of mental activities and a school calendar for 2021/22.The strategic results will be: management and organization of human resources and materials, achievement of a tolerant attitude, collaboration and communication based on ICT tools, dissemination of the project and its tangible results amongst the whole community, development of critical thinking through workshops, improvement of oral and written communication skills and awareness amongst the students of their possibility of moving within Europe as a single space. The main impact of the project is the inclusion of disadvantaged students, as the project will allow them to work alongside the rest, so helping them to feel integrated members not only of the school but also of the society and Europe. Healthy Europe will contribute to a marked increase in digital and communicative competence and collaborative work in a European setting. All of the above will enhance the sustainability of the project in so far as it serves to motivate students and teachers to participate in other aspects of the Erasmus + programme. All the products will be available on the different digital platforms, so they can be transferred to other educational areas. All students will be able to access and learn from them. Moreover, teachers will upload their methodological sheets onto the educational websites so the number of people who will benefit from the results of this project will multiply. Attending seminars, conferences or workshops within the schools will support its sustainability. Teachers will present the results, distribute leaflets and the materials. We will keep the project website up to date and the project team motivated even after its end. This is an effective way of the exploitation of the outcomes in this ITC era.

“The Euro-school reporters” is an ambitious project set to improve our students’ basic and transversal skills as well as to integrate and promote the usage of open digital resources in the daily school work.This project responds to our educational and social needs: - To improve our students’ basic and transversal skills by using innovative and motivating teaching methodologies.- To promote and integrate the usage of the ITC in the school.- To develop students’ and teachers’ English communication skills in a practical way.- To become active European citizenships by developing international cooperation and relations in the frame of Europe.- To motivate and provide teachers and students with a favourable situation for lifelong learning that will open their horizons and enrich their lives. After analysing our needs and difficulties we decided that creating a digital (and interactive) newspaper could be the perfect vehicle for our project. - On one side, as the newspaper will be developed by using open digital resources, both students and teachers will have to learn and improve their ITC skills. They will need to search for information on the internet, take pictures/ record videos with a digital camera/ edit the articles using different programmes (like “Word”, “Adobe”, “paint”…) and create a digital magazine using an online resource (like issuu, calameo, paper…)- On the other side, the different parts of the newspaper (editorial, the weather forecast, how we made it, math challenge games, little garden, family time, project's corner, vocabulary booklet... ) will let us improve our students’ basic and transversal skills while working on different and appealing topics that will cater to the European policies and to our own needs.- Furthermore, our students will take part in the creating process as well as in the management of the newspaper. They will become school reporters that will gather and elaborate the information. They, with the teachers’ help, will also have to write the articles in a digital format and think about the best ways of advertising and taking care of the dissemination of the newspaper inside and outside the school (families, community, local authorities…). This way, the students will have the opportunity to develop their entrepreneurship and have a real approach to the business world.- In addition, English will be our communication language. Teachers and students will be highly motivated to improve their command of the language so that they can develop the activities of the project . Through English we will be able to make new friends around Europe.- Finally, cooperation and teamwork in different levels (students, teachers, families, community…) will be vital. Teachers and students will improve their communication skills and reciprocal learning in what will be a meaningful lifelong learning. Sharing information and working in international teams will allow us to get to know other cultures and ways of thinking better, making us more respectful and tolerant to other countries and life-styles. This will lead us to raise our European conscientious, to feel that we are part of Europe and, consequently, to become active European citicenships.The participating countries are: Lithuania, Slovakia, Greece and Spain. We all have primary school students that will be in charge of the main part of the activities. This variety of languages, cultures and historical backgrounds will enrich the project with an authentic European dimension.In order to achieve of our goals, we will develop collaborative work among international teams. The content of the articles will be gathered in each school by the students and edited by international groups of students during the transnational meetings. Teachers from different schools will work together in the design, implementation and dissemination of the activities and results. They will support and advice the students in the management of the newspaper as well as in the process of the newspaper creation.This project will be carried out in two years. We will develop activities related to the parts of the newspaper, to the creation of the newspaper itself, to the dissemination of the newspaper and to the management of the project.At the end of the project, our students will have worked on and improved their basic and transversal skills in a motivating and ludic way. At the same time, teachers will have learned to use the ITC to carry out a large number of activities in the class and they will have the opportunity to learn from sharing experience other methodologies and educational approaches. They will have also improved their English skills and found new teachers to develop new projects with. The whole community will be benefited from a cultural point of view, and they will become more understanding, tolerant and respectful to the others because, thanks to this newspaper, we will have been able to bring a little part of Europe to their homes and hearts.

Culture can be defined as the characteristics, the habits, traditions, and the beliefs of a country, religion, cuisine, music and arts of society, or a particular group of people. Cities have many different qualities in terms of culture, living styles, economic and social structures, history, beauties, and places to visit, food, environment and so forth. Human beings are an indispensable part of the place they live in and they cannot be considered separately. Nowadays, the children take pleasure in using computers, especially playing computer games and surfing the internet as the technology develops in a dazzling rate. They are not open enough to outside world to interact with the society. Thus, they are not aware of the city and of what they can do in the city. In this way, although people are social beings, they lose their social identity.According to the European priorities, our project focuses on the intercultural dialogues in order to promote international understanding and world peace. The educative community will discover value and respect; understand the local and national cultures, each country and region. Teachers and students will share and exchange experiences to reinforce cooperation in order to achieve great convergence and improvement. The students will develop social skills by sharing ideas, knowledge, tasks, materials and etc. They will learn a foreign language in a true situation of communication and will develop literacy skills as well.The purpose of the partnership is to learn about other cultures and compare with our own culture, to improve ICT competences and foreign languages. We will use the tools such as videos, internet, e-Twinning, the social media-Twitter, YouTube and Facebook-bulletin boards, posters, logos, pictures and books to share and compare different life styles. We will have knowledge and skills in many areas such as culture, history, languages, geography, art and etc. We will also explain the symbols of our own city, what is the most famous or important in your own city, by exploring culture, customs, lifestyles, historical places and natural beauties, crafts, food, dances, music and etc. We will create an awareness of the outside world and other cultures. We will make it the guide of our cultural development. We will also create our own products of activities such as a film, a logo and slogan, a pocket calendar, a digital mini dictionary, slide shows about our culture top creators and religious traditions, educational materials related to our cities, old toys, traditional dresses and games, an e-book with all the recipes of the partnership and the results of the questionnaires.The partner schools have students of the same ages and similar needs. The schools have a variety of cultural diversity with students from different social and economical backgrounds. We want to do this project mainly in terms of developing language and ICT skills and sharing cultures. We are altogether in this project aiming to achieve common goals. We will run the project according to the planned activities, budget and time schedule. The responsibilities of the coordinator and of the partners are determined. We will work cooperatively.In a multi-social and multi-cultural environment the students learn to take responsibility for each other, for the ones who are different in skin colour, religion or just from a different cultural background. Based on cooperative work between the schools, we would like to familiarize pupils with different cultures and enhance their understanding and create an interesting learning environment. Due to that, they will be aware of their city, Europe and their condition as European citizens.

At a Contact Seminar, 3 teachers coincided each of us from very different schools but with a single need: for all our pupils, especially the disadvantaged ones, to become European citizens on equal terms. This was the seed of Embrace Diversity. In the end, five partners joined the project from very different backgrounds: 2 from rural areas, 2 from small cities and 1 from a very large city, all of which helped to make the project innovative. Directed as it was mainly at pupils in primary education, the diversity came from the fact that there were pupils from 30 different nationalities and from families of very different social-economic status as well as some minority groups, principally gypsies. The priorities of the project were directly related to the objectives: -To foster the inclusion of students from poor backgrounds and with learning difficulties as equal citizens. To encourage them to become aware of other realities and to consider a future life abroad as a possibility. -To raise awareness of the fact that contact with other cultures, religions and beliefs enriches and makes us more tolerant and understanding of others. -To promote collaborative teaching-learning. -To increase digital competence, which is absolutely essential in today’s world. -To promote the development of critical thinking by the experimental approach. -To foster a love of foreign languages and to aid communication at work, socially or for fun. Activities were organised to promote the project: leaflets, a logo competition, an informative video, a showcase in the schools to show how the project was developing and dissemination through a range of websites. Other activities focused on reaching the proposed objectives. 5 blocks of work were chosen: our school and its surroundings, gastronomy, music, art and science; all of which helped us attain our main objective, that of social inclusion. The final product for each of these topic areas was put together during each of the visits to the five countries, which in itself helped us learn about the culture of the other countries and offered us a broader vision of Europe. A 3rd group of activities was aimed at assessment, both of the project itself and its impact and sustainability. These included the initial and final questionnaires, interviews, quantification of the visits and interaction with the project websites. The methodology was primarily collaborative: peer-teaching, mixed-ability group work and, whenever possible, the use of the experimental method to generate critical thinking. Most of the activities were carried out using ICTs as the main tool, which served to foment digital competence. The tangible results were: etwinning website, project logo, mascot and anthem, presentation of the participants, a Blog describing visits, DVD presentations of each school, book of experiments, DVD songs and dances, exhibition of artworks, virtual dictionary and cookery book from all the countries and a calendar for 2020 The strategic results were: management and organization of human resources and materials, achievement of a tolerant attitude, cooperation and communication based on ICT tools, dissemination of the extent of the project and its tangible results amongst the whole community, development of critical thinking through science experiments, improvement of oral and written communication skills and awareness amongst the pupils of the possibility of moving within Europe as a single space. The main impact of the project was the inclusion of disadvantaged pupils, as the project allowed them to work alongside the rest, so helping them to feel integrated members not only of the school but also of the society and Europe. Besides, the mutual knowledge that came with the project made us all more tolerant towards the cultural diversity within Europe. Embrace Diversity contributed to a marked increase in digital and communicative competence and collaborative work in a European setting. All of the above enhanced the sustainability of the project in so far as it served to motivate pupils and teachers to participate in other aspects of the Erasmus + programme. The transferible products are available on the different digital platforms, so they can be transferred to other educational areas. All the students have been able to access and learn from them. Attending seminars, conferences or workshops within the schools also supported its sustainability. Teachers presented the results, distributed both leaflets and the materials. The project website was kept up to date and the project team remained motivated even after its end. This has proven to be an effective way of exploiting of the outcomes in this ITC era.in an organizational level, we created two files that give transferability to the project. One is a set of useful documents and the other is a follow up notebook. Both have shared on the E+PRP platform.