NEWSLETTER APRIL 2025

ESHA Biennial in Rome, 29-31 October

Powerful Leadership in Changing Times is the theme of the ESHA Conference in Rome, October, 29-31st 2025. Early bird registrations are coming in. We would like to remind you that paying the early bird registration fee is possible until the 31st of May.

Rome Marriott Park Hotel

We recommend booking the hotel at the venue, through the registration website, because of the convenient logistics of the conference program. Staying in the building where the activities take place is comfortable and the facilities are really nice!

Connect with school heads

On Thursday there is the Gala dinner, where school heads can enjoy themselves after the intense conference days.

You will be able to connect with school heads from many European countries and have immersive experiences in the workshops and technologically advanced presentations.

We hope to see you in Rome!

Invitation to participate: European soil literacy study for schools

Soil is the silent foundation of life – supporting our food systems, regulating climate, and sustaining biodiversity. Yet, soil literacy remains low among younger generations. To address this, we are launching a European-wide Soil Literacy Study and warmly invite school leaders across 23 countries to take part in this important initiative.

We are currently seeking participation from schools in: Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Italy, Iceland, Ireland, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Serbia, the United Kingdom, Spain, Sweden, Cyprus, Slovenia, and Austria.

Each participating school will involve two classrooms, where students will engage in a specially designed lesson on soil. As part of the lesson, students will complete an anonymised* questionnaire that will help assess current levels of soil literacy. The study will revisit participating schools in two years’ time to measure changes in understanding and awareness.

Participating schools will receive:

• Educational materials and support for delivering an interactive and informative soil-focused lesson

• The opportunity to contribute to a major EU-wide study on environmental literacy

• Recognition as part of a network of schools committed to sustainability and innovation in education

For school leaders, this initiative offers a valuable opportunity to:

• Strengthen environmental and science education in your school

• Engage students in a meaningful and real-world research project

• Inform future policies and practices in sustainability education across Europe

Your participation will help build a clearer picture of soil literacy across Europe and support the development of more effective educational strategies for the future.

Want to know more?

CURIOSOIL presented at the AVS School Heads Congress

In March the ESHA team, accompanied by hologram LEXIE, presented the CURIOSOIL project at the AVS School Heads Congress in Nieuwegein, The Netherlands.

The actual implementation of interactive AI means that teachers and learners need competences to use this effectively. It can support combining subjects and working towards an interdisciplinary approach. For school leaders it means to have a vision on the use of digital tools and AI in school and how this impacts teaching and learning.

ESHA team members presented the CURIOSOIL project and invited schools to participate in the research around soil knowledge and curiosity as well as to participate in workshops for school heads or the Community of Practice in the Netherlands. 

What the series Adolescence teaches us about teenagers and trust in a digital world

‘As a school leader and a parent, I found Adolescence more moving than I expected. The series is gripping, but what stays with you is the discomfort. You feel how quickly a child can be pushed into a certain image, often without the chance to tell their own story. It reminded me just how overwhelming the flow of information and judgment can be for young people today.’

The powerful Netflix series Adolescence follows a 13-year-old boy accused of killing a classmate. While the story grips you with suspense, what lingers is something deeper: how vulnerable teenagers are in a world flooded with images, opinions, and assumptions. One drone shot lingers over the school courtyard, suggesting not just surveillance, but exposure, how quickly someone can be judged, framed, or even misunderstood.

‘It also hit close to home. Dealing with a case of cyberbullying at school recently reminded me how much effort and endurance it takes to truly get to the bottom of things. It’s intense, emotional work and I understand why some schools might shy away from it. But this time, we didn’t, and we won’t. We kept going, and when you finally get to the nitty-gritty of what’s really happening, it’s incredibly satisfying. We were able to address it fully, support those involved, and now we’re using the experience to educate all our students. Watching Adolescence felt like confirmation.  Yes, this work, the time spent on it matters!’

This series reminds us why digital literacy is no longer a luxury. It’s a necessity. Not only for students, but also for the educators and school leaders who guide them.

DRONE Project

That’s where the EU-funded DRONE project comes in. DRONE stands for Teacher & school leaders training to promote Digital liteRacy & combat the spread of disinfOrmation among vulNerable groups of adolEscents. Its mission is to help schools support young people, especially those from vulnerable backgrounds, to develop critical thinking skills and become more resilient in the face of digital misinformation and online manipulation.

Teaching materials like free training, tools, and lesson plans that empower teachers and school leaders across Europe to strengthen media literacy and emotional resilience in the classroom are still in development, but key insights are already available. The DRONE gap reports and national reports, based on qualitative interviews across Europe, offer a revealing look into how parents, students, teachers and school leaders perceive digital risks and how schools are currently responding.

If Adolescence makes you wonder how to support students growing up in this complex digital reality, with DRONE we hope to offer a hopeful, practical way forward.

ELNE Webinar Month

Schools for Sustainability Citizenship, plan your Sustainable transition with the whole school, by Myrthe Stienstra: The Paris Agreement continues to be the best hope for all humanity. Europe will stay the course and keep working with all nations that want to protect nature and stop global warming,” stated European Commission Chair Von der Leyen on January 21, 2025. We discussed how teachers and school leaders can be empowered to integrate sustainable practices into their curriculum – not as an additional task but as a core element of education. The focus was on how participants can foster sustainable narratives and actions within their schools, equipping students with the knowledge, skills, and values necessary to address pressing environmental challenges while becoming responsible global citizens.

Inclusive Leadership: How to Foster an Inclusive Culture in Schools by Loes van Wessum. The aim of the webinar was to collect ideas for leadership practices to enhance an inclusive culture in schools. It focussed on the importance of enhancing leadership practices for inclusion.

Shared Leadership in Education, a Hydra or a Clear Concept? by Petra van Haren. A group of top researchers on educational leadership discussed their perspectives on shared leadership. Panelists are Mika Risku, Miquel Àngel Essomba Gelabert, Joseph Kessels, Loes van Wessum and Anna d’Addio.

Finnish Principal Barometer 2024: Light at the End of the Tunnel

The Finnish Principal Barometer 2024 has been released, shedding light on the current state of school leadership in Finland. This comprehensive survey, conducted each spring, explores the workplace wellbeing of Finnish school leaders, providing valuable insights into their professional and personal challenges and triumphs.

Key Findings

1. Burnout and Engagement: After years of strain, the latest survey shows an upswing in principals' workplace wellbeing. The data reveal that burnout, which had dramatically increased from 2019 to 2023, is finally easing. Work engagement, which had been on the decline, began to rise again in 2023 and 2024. This positive trend indicates that school leaders' sense of doing meaningful work and having opportunities for influence is gradually being restored.

2. Workload and Time Management: The key stressors cited by school leaders in 2024 involved their workload and lack of time. These challenges were followed by concerns about teachers' ability to cope and lack of resources. Principals are calling for more training in areas such as managing school community wellbeing, crisis leadership, and socio-emotional skills.

3. Violence and Bullying: The survey points to several positive findings, including a decline in the threat of violence and the bullying and other mental abuse experienced by school leaders. Although the reported violence is limited in scope, it remains a critical area of concern.

4. Physiological Measurements: The survey includes First beat measurements to register participants' heart rate variability, stress, sleep, physical activity, and recovery. These measurements provide a comprehensive overview of the leaders' overall strain and how work-related stress affects their leisure and sleep. The previous research data show that school leaders experience less stress during the working day if they tailor their leisure time to suit their wellbeing needs.

5. Record Participation: A record number of school leaders, almost 800, completed the survey in 2024. Of them, some 150 participated in physiological measurements and have since received personal feedback on these. The high participation rate underscores the importance of the survey and the valuable insights it provides.

Looking Ahead

The Finnish Principal Barometer 2024 offers a detailed account of how the pandemic and subsequent events have shaped school leaders' coping capacity. By addressing the identified challenges and leveraging the opportunities, principals can create a positive impact on their schools and communities. The report serves as a valuable resource for policymakers, educational organizations, and principal associations to support and empower school leaders.

BIO-STREAMS for school heads

On 21 March 2025 the ESHA team informed and presented to school heads the BIO-STREAMS project. In multiple face-to-face talks the addressing of childhood obesity was discussed by explaining how BIO-STREAMS works.

The project will use a Multi-Pillar Framework to address childhood obesity by building an EU biobank, micro-moments and mobile recommendation systems. The information was communicated through a running PowerPoint presentation and a flyer that was also handed out. We specifically focussed on the school interventions that will start in 2025 and explained the building blocks for that.

Classroom intervention – 4 workshops

• Hydration

• Breakfast

• Cooking at home and family meals

• Physical (in)activity

Digital tools for home or classroom use

• Mobile application

• Serious games

• Lifestyle recommendations engine

• Data in BioBank

Lead Your School Toward a Sustainable Future

Join the SYNAPSES Academy Summer School in Greece!

This summer, school heads from across Europe and beyond are invited to take part in an inspiring, week-long learning experience in the stunning surroundings of Marathon, Greece. The SYNAPSES Academy International Summer School offers a unique opportunity to explore the role of school leadership in shaping a culture of sustainability and active citizenship.

Running parallel to the teacher-focused track, this exclusive program for school leaders focuses on implementing sustainability citizenship at the whole-school level – turning vision into action. Participants will engage in sessions designed specifically for educational leadership, while also having opportunities to collaborate and exchange insights with participating teachers, sparking powerful whole-school synergies.

As a school head, you’ll gain:

• Strategies for embedding sustainability and active citizenship into your school’s ethos and practices

• Tools to support and empower teachers in delivering meaningful sustainability education

• Insights into building partnerships and community involvement around sustainability goals

• A network of like-minded school leaders committed to future-focused education

This course is eligible for funding under Erasmus+ KA1 (Key Action 1), making it an excellent opportunity to combine professional development with European collaboration.

Beyond the sessions, this is also a chance to reconnect with your purpose as a leader – within a relaxed, scenic setting that invites reflection, renewal, and creative thinking (Watch this short video).

The SYNAPSES Summer School takes place 29 June – 4 July 2025 and is part of the European Sustainability in Action (ESIA) initiative. A limited number of spots are available for school heads, so early interest is encouraged.

To learn more about the school heads’ track and how to join, please reach out to Myrthe Stienstra at myrthe.stienstra@esha.org.

Feel free to share this opportunity within your network – let’s inspire more schools to lead the way toward a sustainable future.

HEADstart #20: The impact of GDPR and children’s data rights

Check out our new HEADstart on the impact of GDPR and children’s data rights and learn what data handling procedures are necessary to create a legally compliant school environment.

Download you copy of HEADstart #20

Schools of Sanctuary Ireland

In the words of the European School Heads Association (ESHA), our school is “committed to fostering an organisational environment where equality, diversity, and inclusion are at the heart of what we do. Our values emphasise respect for every individual and their human rights, ensuring that all voices are valued. Through collaboration, advocacy, and leadership, we strive to create a landscape of school communities throughout Europe that reflects and respects the richness of Europe’s diversity”.

Schools of Sanctuary Ireland is a registered charity dedicated to the promotion of Ireland as a safe and welcoming place for immigrants.

Cork City, where our secondary school is located, is the Republic of Ireland’s second largest city, and one of the fastest growing cities in the European Union. The motto of Cork City is “A safe harbour for ships” and the school’s motto is “Deeds not Words”. These mottoes together represent the school community’s determination to be a truly welcoming and safe environment for students regardless of cultural or religious background, sexual orientation, or gender.

Nano Nagle College is a secondary school located on the Northside of Cork City, in a neighbourhood, which is designated among the most socially and economically marginalised, in Ireland. In 2022 we became a Champion School of Sanctuary.

Given the fractious nature of the world today; we are determined to offer our students a supportive and affirming educational experience regardless of who they are or where they are from. Since we have a School of Sanctuary, the only secondary school in Cork, with the designation; we have raised awareness of the diversity of culture in our school and wider community by celebrating our diverse backgrounds.

For example, last year we hosted a very successful event called One Book One Community, where in collaboration with other local primary schools in the neighbourhood, we celebrated the book The Boy at the Back of the Class by Onjali Q. Rauf, which details the life of an immigrant child in London.

Copies of the book were purchased by the school and given to students and parents who read the book with their children prior to a public celebration in our school. The celebration was open to all in our community with speakers including secondary, primary school children and the Lord Mayor of Cork City, Kieran McCarthy, who remarked on the pleasant atmosphere and the wonderful stalls set up by our students detailing the richness of various cultures living in Cork and attending our schools.

The School of Sanctuary designation is not just a set of formal events; it extends beyond that, for example we have worked to increase the uptake of modern foreign languages in our school by ensuring that all students study a European language, we host modern foreign language assistants to help teach Spanish and French; we have partnered with a school in France who have visited our school through use of Erasmus Plus funding.

Our school has a small population but despite this we have students from various countries as diverse as Austria, Bangladesh, Bulgaria, France, Italy, Korea, Spain, Ukraine, and Zimbabwe.

We have also harnessed the language skills of our teachers to help students newly arrived from outside of the European Union, an example of this is a teacher who can speak Bangladeshi who has been able to help students newly arrived at our school from Bangladesh, and a teacher who can speak Korean.

It is worth noting that some students arriving in Ireland are coming from non E.U. countries via other E.U. countries and as a result can be multilingual, being able to speak their native language, an E.U. language such as French and now English. They also learn Irish in Nano Nagle College.

As a school that is part of a network of 732 other Irish voluntary secondary schools, we have been able to promote the School of Sanctuary initiative in other schools.

The following was noted by the department of Education in a recent school inspection: “The senior leadership team had reviewed the code of behaviour recently with all stakeholders to promote a positive culture of respect and integrity as well as high expectations in the school. Students participated in focus groups with senior management to review policies around uniform and behaviour and students stated that this did influence change. The school actively encouraged student leadership through specific programmes on inclusion and mental health initiatives, as well as working groups on sustainability and mentoring.”

Last week we became only the 38th school in Ireland, to be awarded the LGBTQ+ Quality Mark, by Belong To Youth Ireland.

This is important to our school because as I write this article on the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz; on the 27th of January 1945, soldiers of the Soviet Red Army, Ukrainian to be exact, liberated prisoners from the death camps of the Nazi regime.

As you read this, Ukrainian soldiers are fighting for the right of their fellow Europeans to determine the democratic direction of their country in the face of aggressive autocratic Russian expansionism; while their President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, a man of Jewish heritage, lays a wreath to commemorate the victims and survivors of the Holocaust. Consider the paradox in the above statement.

Last week Donald Trump, the newly elected President of the United States, set his sights on the City of Chicago. Chicago is a sanctuary city. A sanctuary city is a city that pressures government to allow refugees to pursue asylum. Now, Chicago, New York, Boston, San Francisco, and other cities will be potentially denied funding, from the federal government, if they do not cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

At Nano Nagle College a safe and inclusive educational experience is paramount.

Adrian Gibbs, School Principal

The OECD Schools+ report

The worldwide OECD Schools+ gathering was held from 2 to 4 April where the latest report ‘Unlocking High Quality Teaching’ was launched.

In the webinar of 12 March, Anna Pons has revealed the key factors of this important report, in which the important role of school leadership is also revealed.

In the panel discussion with Andreas Schleicher (OECD), Javier González (Summa), Katarina Grgec (Ministry of Science and Education of Croatia), Cindy Johanson (George Lucas Educational Foundation) and our director Petra van Haren highlighted the role of school leaders in relation to the report. She spoke about the aspects that relate to change and creating an environment for high quality teaching. Of the seven aspects mentioned in the report, there are five directly relating to the role of school heads. She highlighted:

• Allocating teachers to learners

• Setting a clear school vision and ethos

• Providing opportunities for planning and professional collaboration

• Using data and research to drive improvements

• Connecting with other learning environments

Another aspect she highlighted was the former ‘soft skills’ that may be the critical skills for the future, as was also mentioned by Andreas Schleicher in his keynote lecture. It will require our leadership to meet the needs of the (near) future for our learners. The positioning and facilitating of teachers to meet the requirements of high-quality teaching and learning means that we must rethink our education and show leadership in redesigning education for tomorrow.

You can also watch the webinar Unpacking the Complexity of Teaching and the Role of Leadership by Anna Pons.