Inclusive Schools

The vision of the Inclusive Schools II project is to significantly increase the knowledge and skills of school leaders, teachers and student teachers to work inclusively with the increasing range of diverse learners in their schools. The project sets an aim of building an international, pan-European network of practitioners and experts implementing inclusive-oriented activities.

While training events are planned in each country, during which participants will have an opportunity to get to know each other and identify common interest, communication activities are designed bearing in mind that the main challenge will be to maintain the network on completion of the training events and keep sharing good practice. Using social media is a ready-made answer to any concerns about the sustainability of the newly created network. Project participants will be strongly encouraged to use popular social media to communicate and share good practice. The existing web pages and fora will be adapted to host network of project participants. The benefit will not only be to facilitate networking between project participants, but also to enable them to connect them to participants of these projects in Europe and beyond, widening debate and providing opportunities to promote Inclusive education in Europe and beyond.

The vision of the Inclusive Schools II project is to significantly increase the knowledge and skills of school leaders, teachers and student teachers to work inclusively with the increasing range of diverse learners in their schools. The project will scale up the good practice established in the methodology of Inclusive Schools I, in order to further:

1. increase the number of school leaders and teachers trained in inclusive education policy and practice
2. deepen these educators’ knowledge and understanding of inclusive education policy, practice and culture
3. enhance the skills of teachers and school leaders working inclusively in schools
4. strengthen leadership of inclusive education in schools
5. facilitate enhanced cooperation within the school community (parents, students, school staff) and with a wider spectrum of education stakeholders
6. increase the confidence and motivation of school leaders to lead the implementation of inclusive education, and of teachers to implement inclusive pedagogies
7. influence policy change at school, local, regional and national levels
8. increase the positive momentum of change initiated by Inclusive Schools I.

The project will achieve its aims and objectives by developing three training strands: a face-to-face course specifically for school leaders; a face-to-face course for serving teachers; and a Mass Open Online Course (MOOC) for student and newly qualified teachers. The project will include a thorough quality assurance framework and external evaluation process, as well as a detailed exploitation plan to open dialogue about inclusive education between the school communities involved, other schools, local officials and policy-makers at national level. The project will identify role models who exemplify good practice to act as influencers of change locally and nationally. Inclusive Schools II is led by the British Council (UK) in partnership with 5 organisations and institutions across Europe.

Project website:

www.inclusiveschools2.net

Facebook:

www.facebook.com/InscoolEU

Project partners:

• British Council Poland (coordinator)
• CESIE
• Lifelong Learning Platform
• InterActing
• University of Granada
• ESHA