Past:
EPNoSL
The European Policy Network on School Leadership, lead by IACM-FORTH, Crete, Greece, has been a cooperation of universities, governments, civil society and individual experts. It was aiming at developing policy recommendations for school leadership as the most fruitful approach to school governance in present day Europe and also to give a scientific basis to help those who want to pursue this approach on national and even institutional level. The final output of the policy network was an implementation handbook with a separate chapter on involving stakeholders and sharing responsibilities with them, with special focus on parents, school students and teachers. Reading the chapter that was primarily drafted from a school leader/teacher point of view, you will find several action point for the future and possibilities for future cooperation with network members. EPA is part of the Transition Committee that has a mandate to find the best ways to sustain the network
KeyCoNet
The Key Competence Network, led by the European Schoolnet EPA was an associate member contributing to the events during the working of the network as well as to the final output, policy recommendations on introducing a key competence approach to curriculum design and execution. Based on the recommendation on key competences for lifelong learning, the network has been promoting a shift from content based education to a competence based, learning outcomes centred one, involving stakeholders and the broader community, promoting modern teaching methods as well as suitable assessment.
SIRIUS
The SIRIUS Network on the Education of Migrants invited EPA as an external partner. The network was dealing with community involvement from the start, but EPA managed to introduce the topic of parental involvement as a core issue in education, part of but still different from community involvement. It was EPA that raised the issue of education of EU migrants that will be on the agenda of the follow-up of this network. The work of the second period has started and EPA is invited to be part of it.
Shared Histories for a Europe without Dividing Lines
This Council of Europe (CoE) project was aiming at publishing an e-book aiming at encouraging learners and educators as well as providing support to explore issues on a pan-European basis, different perceptions of Europe, how far European’s experience of events differed, Europe’s heritage and the ways in which it is presented and to offer a particular focus on social, economic and cultural, rather than political aspects. The output is a fascinating book available free on the website of the CoE. EPA managed to have an input included on building on family histories when exploring diversity in the perception and interpretation of historic events.
ELICIT+
The first EPA project within the framework of the new Erasmus+ programme is on European literacy and citizenship education. In a large consortium of universities, and NGOs, led by the University of Limoges, France EPA is responsible for the development of a very special training programme that involves all main stakeholders, school students, parents, teachers and school heads in the same training, even trying to involve local municipalities as a mutual learning exercise to raise European literacy and live active citizenship.
FamilyEduNet
In this virtual training project EPA is a member of the consortium led by FAPAC, a Catalan member of EPA, having responsibility for content development, communication and dissemination. The project involves two universities and two other EPA members, CONFAP (PT) and PiE (PL). The training programme is a European upscaling effort of a successful previous Catalan project Xarxa Clau, aiming at supporting parents in their parenting for educational success. The project, while aiming at parents in general, has three special target groups, parents living in rural areas, parents with hospitalised children and Roma parents.
ParentNets
Another Spanish project is aiming at making parents familiar with the digital, virtual world and supporting them in their effort to help their children avoid being bullied or becoming bullies, save them from potential dangers by becoming familiar with widespread technologies of the digital age, being able to engage in conversation with their children and being able to detect if a problem should arise. The project covers areas like browsing the internet, social networks, cyberbullying, phising and online games.