About the project

Empowering School Principals for Inclusive School Culture aims to address the professionalization of school principals in primary and secondary schools, focusing on inclusive education, in Croatia and North Macedonia as in these two countries there is no program for professional development (PD) for school principals related to inclusive education.

The overall objective of this project is Supporting school in creating inclusive school culture

More specifically the project aims to:

• Provide education systems in North Macedonia and Croatia with professional development program for inclusive education for school principals.
• Empower school principals in creating inclusive school culture
• Engage policy coalition to support evidence-based policies regarding professional development of school principals and their impact on school inclusiveness.

School principals are recognized as professionals but their role in establishing inclusive school culture is underestimated. The project will address school principals professionalization at in-service level of PD through:

• Proposing a 5-modules programs for professional development based on the best practices existing in Slovenia and The Netherlands;
• piloting them with 60 school principals (30/primary school principals-30/secondary school principals) from 2 countries
• providing relevant advocacy tools to achieve a policy outreach

By streamlining the professionalization of school principals through PD, the project will provide PD for school principals to create an inclusive school culture in their schools resulting in better management of schools, in both the academic and non-academic aspects.

The impact of the project will be measured by an impact study that will show the effectiveness of the intervention. The impact study and the policy roadmap are the main tools for policy outreach as the partnership foresees relevant engagement of representatives of identified policy coalitions in the project activities. The results will be disseminated at the national and international level through events and participation at the international conference as well as through the final policy conferences. The project results will be shared through social media, “old” and “new” media, in presence events, networking, and meetings with relevant education committees. The developed PD programs will be available to both public and private providers who will be able to use them to contribute to professional development of school leaders.

In order to ensure a long-term impact of the project initiatives, a memorandum of understanding signed among partners will ensure further actions at the national level as well as future joint proposals, taking in consideration the country situation. At policy level, a memorandum of understanding signed by the representatives of policy coalitions will ensure further support to PD for social inclusion in future policy process.

The project built on a multi-country partnership with relevant and recognized experience in Management of international projects,Design of professional development program: Implementation of PD program for educational staff;Implementing consultative process in policy outreach and dissemination.

In the section partnership a more detailed presenttaion of the partnership can be found.