EDITORIAL & MESSAGE FROM THE CHAIR

Now and then a new Newsletter finds its way out of the computer. They could be more frequent if the material flooded in to us more often – but now and then…!

Last month the Board had its annual in-between-conference meeting. This time in Riga, since the 2003 conference will be held in Latvia, Riga.

These decisions were made:

• The web-site will be transferred from Slovenia to Latvia
• The list of activators will be updated
• The directory also needs to be updated. Here we must ask the national activators for help (see below).
• The Prospectus (ENIRDEM history and interesting information) which David presented last year will be updated and distributed in the next Newsletter – as well as published at the web-site.
• The existence or not and desire or not of the Action-groups was discussed. As far as the Board knows there is very little “action” in the groups. Our suggestion is that they should be abolished.

ENIRDEM BOARD, elected in Kilkenny September 2002

• Ilze Ivanova (chair),
• Anne Kelleher,
• Zohar Tal,
• Justina Erculj,
• Erik Groth, and
• Jukka Ahonen.

THE ENIRDEM CONFERENCE 2003

The 2003 annual meeting will be held in Riga, Latvia. The invitation is attached. (Look for attached document “ENIRDEM CONF Invitation.doc”)

REVIEW OF ENIRDEM’S NEEDS AND FUTURE DIRECTIONS – A REMINDER

This is a summary of the brainstorming of over sixty participants at the 10th ENIRDEM Conference in Bled in September 2001. Upon this analysis of needs the proposal below for an Umbrella Network was formulated. Time to come back to them when we meet in Riga?

Set up an ENIRDEM exchange (a two-way swap of roles) or attachment (one person arrives) programme - of varying duration (1 week to 1 year).where we visit each others' institutions to teach and research.

Invite ENIRDEM colleagues to attend a short course you are running.

Develop an ENIRDEM mentoring system where colleagues support each other by e-mail and other means.

Develop ENIRDEM's use of ICT * new web-site with chat rooms for special interest groups

• longer term ENIRDEM contribution to a virtual Masters' degree programme
• a European Leadership Academy

Boost publicity and PR (public relations) to make ENIRDEM much more widely known. e.g. Hyperlinks from EU web-sites; some form of permanent secretariat; strengthening the Newsletter.

Complete an inventory of all ENIRDEM-inspired projects and make these available as a portfolio when applying for bids. We have to look more formal when bidding for funds

European Masters' degree should be seriously investigated in order to draw on ENIRDEM member's' considerable expertise. (one group opposed the idea)

Make a clear strategy to access EU funding - (Socrates, Erasmus, Columbus) perhaps led by colleagues based close to Brussels of with useful contacts there.

Develop a list of contacts to invite, especially in countries not well represented - suggest specific persons to contact and let them have the Newsletter.

Initiate more joint projects between institutions.

Consider smaller regional conferences to save on travel expenses.

ENIRDEM MATTERS & ISSUES

Dear ENIRDEM friends,

I am glad to inform you that we have developed a Comenius training course titled SALT (School Action Learning Teams). It is trying to meet the current needs for schools that want to find successful ways of combining school improvement and team activity and is intended for teachers, head teachers, teacher trainers and school advisors. I would like to invite you to apply for the course or to ask you to inform people who might be interested in it to apply at their national agencies. I am attaching a flyer containing essential information about the course.

Hope to see you in Slovenia,

Justina

(Look for attached document “SALT”)

ENIRDEM publications & publishers

ABC, De Lier

• 1992 Training for Educational Management in Europe van Wieringen, F, ed.
• 1993 Educational Management across Europe Bolam, R and van Wieringen, eds.
• 1994 European Issues in Educational Management Oldroyd, D and van Wieringen, F, eds.
• 1994 Reforming Educational Management in Europe Hamalainen, K and van Wieringen, F, eds.
• 1996 Improving Educational Management Kalous, J and van Wieringen, F, eds.
  1. Waxmann: Munchen/New York
     • 1999 Research on Educational Management in Europe Bolam, R and van Wieringen, F, eds. * 2000 New Heads in Europe Bolam, R., Dunning, G and Karstanje, P, eds.

  Budapest: Wolters Kluwer

  • 2000 Quality and Educational Management: a European Issue Balazs, E., von Wieringen, F and Watson, L, eds.

  Koper, Slovenia: School of management

  • 2002 Leading Schools for Learning Oldroyd, D.ed

WHAT’S HAPPENING IN …

DENMARK

The Danish Educational Community is very much concerned with:

1. How to improve competences for joining the knowledge society for both young people in school and for people at work,
2. How to measure and document competences in order to give credit to people without formal qualifications but who are ready for a specific course or job.

It points into two directions:

• How schools and colleges can be better at developing such competences in a flexible way, fulfilling individual student’s needs and without losing all the students who are more interested in working with the technical aspects of their future profession.
• How providers of training (maybe the same colleges) can find new ways of measuring and training people on the job

In general this has more to do with learning than with teaching. It also means that teachers - much more than before - must co-operate. Almost all Danish vocational colleges now have decided to organise themselves in teams.

In many cases teams are responsible for high quality, not only in teaching, learning, planning and evaluation but also in administration, co-operation and competence development.

Some colleges work in a structure comprising:

• director,
• senior managers responsible for specific processes (pedagogic, development, personnel, economy)
• middle managers working as coaches
• teams responsible for delivering the courses.

The traditional hierarchy has been replaced by a much more dynamic structure, but also a very difficult one for all parties.

Therefore Danish school leaders are faced with two challenges:

• To participate in changing the system from the teaching mode to the learning mode and to help teachers to work with individual students instead of traditional classes
• To find a new professional profile where coaching of teams instead of directing them plays an important role

Direction and administration have been taken off their shoulders, but not all leaders find it a good idea.

Hans Joergen Knudsen (New activator)

ENGLAND

1. has seen a number of controversies in the education system. One of them was a scandal about the inaccurate grading of public examination papers. It led to the resignation of the Minister of Education Estelle Morris. She was also held accountable for the failure of 11-year olds to reach the national targets set by the government for results on standardised tests. Her successor has become embroiled in a heated debate about the government’s proposal to charge supplementary fees to university students in order to boost funding in a higher education system that has expanded faster than the funds to support it.

There has also been a scandal about people stealing money for a system of Individual Learning Accounts devised to provide funding for the training of less qualified young people. Many claims were made without the training being provided.

In May a mother became the first parent imprisoned under new truancy laws. She was initially sentenced to 60 days for persistently failing to ensure her daughters' attendance, although this was reduced on appeal.

David Oldroyd

POLAND

As Poland prepares for accession to the EU a new project called ‘My School in the European Union’ has been established. It is part of a concerted effort by the government to raise awareness in the next generation of the ‘club’ they are likely to join if the referendum for membership results in a majority Yes’ vote.

A career ladder system of teachers’ pay is now operating in Poland. The result has been to differentiate salaries more than before based on the level of qualification of the teachers. This may be good news for higher education institutions as the desire for further study is stimulated in order to earn higher salaries.

The 1999 educational reform and legal changes in Poland are now described and fully documented on the Polish government web-site for all wishing to have the details.

New regulations for school directors are under discussion at the Ministry of Education. Already school directors must have a Magister degree (5 years at university) as well as post-diploma courses in educational management. They must also have five years of successful school or academic teaching with positive assessments from inspectors or senior academic colleagues.

Dorota Ekiert

ROMANIA

Starting this year, the University of Bucharest Department for Open and Distance Learning (CREDIS) is organising a postgraduate course on Educational Management. The Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences provides the scientific and methodological support. The aim of this Master degree course is to respond to an already consistent demand on the educational market to professionalise managerial positions in education. The target group of this course is current or future school directors and inspectors wishing to improve their knowledge and competence in educational management and administration. It is the first time that such a Masters degree has been offered through open and distance learning system in our country.

Lucian Ciolan (New Activator)

SLOVAKIA

ECTS and Diploma Supplement the Slovak Republic The European Community promotes study abroad as a means of improving the quality of academic co-operation bringing benefits to students and higher education institutions. Based on the results of the pilot scheme, the ECTS system has proved to be an effective instrument for creating curricular transparency and facilitating academic recognition and, as a consequence, the European Credit Transfer System has been included within the higher education component - Erasmus - of the Socrates Programme (1995-1999).

Diploma Supplement - State of implementation in the Slovak Republic

According to the proposal of the new Higher Education Act which came into force on April 1, 2002, the Diploma Supplement will be issued by all higher education institutions together with the diploma to all graduates in the future as a compulsory part of their credentials.

Jan Michalko

SWEDEN

PROJECT ”TEACHERS LEADING SCHOOL IMPROVEMENT” One of the most advocated tasks for Swedish school leaders is to lead school improvement – to be a “learning leader”. At the neighbouring Karlstad University and Dalarna University active environments for research on school improvement can be found. To strengthen these still more a common Centre for School Improvement has been created. This centre, in collaboration with the new State authority for School Improvement, has started a project to offer all Swedish municipalities and teacher teams a ”course package” in school improvement, which also can generate 15 points for the ECTS (European Credit Transfer System). The project has been named Teachers Leading School Improvement and will be characterised by its bottom-up-perspective, leading to practical work with school improvement at local schools. The Swedish Educational Broadcasting Company has also been commissioned to produce six TV-programs that will be sent in one of the State channels, supporting the project.

Erik Groth

UK A former head teacher of a primary school has been charged with forging tests in what is thought to be the first criminal case of this kind. The former headteacher of South Borough School in Maidstone, Kent, was charged with 14 offences of forgery. He is accused of forging national curriculum tests taken by 11 year olds at South Borough School last May. He is also charged with forging the results of the same tests at Eythorne Elvington School in Dover and with forging tests for entrance to grammar school at South Borough School in 2002. Following his resignation last term, he appeared before Maidstone Magistrates on January 22.

David Oldroyd

NETWORKING

Contact with the World Bank

The World Bank is initiating a project for the South East Europe region to establish a clearing house for school director qualifications and training. The project "developing clearing houses for school management and school directors" will be supported by a Greek Trust Fund. The project initiator is Aigli Zafeirakou, Educational Specialist and Consultant for Europe and Central Asia. She is an assistant professor from Democritus University in Thrace, Greece who has been seconded to the World Bank, Washington DC for the last two years working on Education Projects in the Balkan Countries.

After correspondence with David Oldroyd she is contacting some of our activators in the region and wrote:

“After reading the Newsletter you sent me, I think that there is room to include in my proposal a co-operation with ENIRDEM (probably after the first exploratory phase of the project). We will talk later about that”.

David sent her Eric Verbiest’s ‘A Cross-European Survey on Training School Leaders’ chapter from the last ENIRDEM book ‘ Leading Schools for Learning’ published in 2002. We should try to enlist Aigli as our first Greek participant in ENIRDEM and look forward to some active collaboration in the future.

David Oldroyd

WHAT’S HAPPENING TO…..?

Dorota Ekiert and David Oldroyd

Dorota is on her sabbatical year. She and David spent six weeks in Bristol where David made a return guest lecturer visit to teach a course on ‘Managing People in Education’ at his former Graduate School of Education. Dorota was a Visiting Research Fellow and was able to access recent literature in English while in Bristol. David is currently writing distance learning materials on ‘Human Resources for Learning’ for the University of London MA in Applied Educational leadership and Management. The new programme, mainly for ‘overseas’ students, will start in the autumn of 2003. David will probably become a ‘virtual tutor’ on the programme and iha being trained on-line for the role. This academic couple run the risk of becoming a ‘virtual marriage’ as they spend so much time at their computers!

INTERESTING WEB-SITES

http://www.mpin.cg.yu/sajt/index.htm – This is a brand new web-site in a Balkan country that is re-defining itself. The site is available in English and is for the Ministry of Education in Montenegro. In January 2003 in an evolving constitutional process, the remaining part of the former Yugoslavia chose to rename itself Serbia and Montenegro. ENIRDEM looks forward to recruiting an Activator from both Serbia and Montenegro before the next constitutional referendum there in three years’ time.

ENIRDEM ACTIVATORS

Two years ago it was decided that for the new decade our Correspondents are renamed ACTIVATORS to reflect our new commitment to pro-active networking. Being an activator will mean to make the ENIRDEM nationally public, to build a national network, to distribute the Newsletter to all ENIRDEM friends in that network and also to report back to the editors to keep the Newsletter alive. Also other kinds of information matters could be desired.

1. Albania - Alqi Mustafai (ipsved@icc.al.eu.org)
2. Austria -
3. Belarus - Yuri Zagoumenov (izag@user.unibel.by)
4. Belgium - Paul Mahieu (paul.mahieu@ua.ac.be)
5. Bosnia-Herzegovina – Enes D (denes@tk.kim.ba)
6. Bulgaria - Bozhidar Gyoshev (gyoshev@mail.techno-link.com)
7. Croatia – Vesna Hrvoj-Sic (vhrvojsic@yahoo.com)
8. Cyprus - Yiorgos Lambrou, Ministry of Education (yslyiorgos@netscape.net)
9. Czech Republic - Lenka Slavikova (lenka.slavikova@pedf.cuni.cz) Not confirmed!
10. Denmark – Hans Jörgen Knudsen (hans.joergen.Knudsen@delud.dk)
11. Estonia -
12. Finland - Annikki Jantti (anniki.jantti@opeko.fi)
13. France -
14. Germany - Uwe Hameyer (uwe.hameyer@t-online.de)
15. Greece -
16. Hungary – Maria Szabo (drszabom@axelero.hu)
17. Iceland - Borkur Hansen (borkur@khi.is)
18. Israel - Zohar Tal, (zohar@macam.ac.il)
19. Italy -
20. Ireland – Anne Kelleher (AKelleher.ias@eircom.net)
21. Latvia - Ilze Ivanova (ilzei@lanet.lv)
22. Lithuania - Rimantas Zelvys (zelvys@delfi.lt)
23. Luxembourg -
24. Macedonia (FYROM) -
25. Malta -
26. Moldova -
27. Netherlands - Eric Verbiest (e.verbiest@fontys.nl)
28. Norway - Yngve Haugstveit (yngveh@osir.hihm.no)
29. Poland – Dorota Ekiert-Oldroyd (ekiert@us.edu.pl)
30. Portugal - Maria de Fatima Sanches (fsanches@correio.cc.fc.ul.pt)
31. Romania – Lucian Ciolan (lucian_ise@hotmail.com)
32. Russia -
33. Slovakia - Jan Michalko (jmichalko@ukf.sk)
34. Slovenia - Justina Erculj (justina.erculj@solazaravnatelje.si)
35. Spain -
36. Switzerland -
37. Sweden - Erik Groth (egro@du.se)
38. UK - David Oldroyd (d.oldroyd@wp.pl)
39. Ukraine -
40. Yugoslavia –

NEXT EDITION is planned for June – if we receive material from our correspondents…..