Pilot Inclusive Schools

This component focuses on practical measures needed at school level to enable inclusive education. It aims at helping general education and Vocational Education Training (VET) schools in changing their policies and practices through setting good examples benefitting from the European Union and the region. 

The pilot school component aims to help pilot schools to develop inclusive cultures, policies and practices.

This specific project activity will attempt to increase experience and knowledge about how schools can become more inclusive when we make use of the different views of those involved. It will help increase understanding of inclusion in education in 49 schools and will help those schools to develop inclusive cultures, policies and practices.

In doing so, it will challenge many assumptions about school improvement and educational reform. It is about ‘school improvement with attitude'. Hence, school improvement becomes far more than merely a technical process of raising the capacity of schools to generate particular measurable outcomes. It involves dialogues about ethical principles and how these can be related to curricula, approaches to teaching and learning, and the building of relationships within and beyond schools. 

Network of inclusive schools

The Joint European Union and Council of Europe Project "Regional Support for Inclusive Education", has through an open and transparent process selected 49 schools from Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Montenegro, Serbia, "The former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia" and Kosovo* to participate in the project as pilot schools whose inclusive practices will be supported, enriched and later on replicated as successful examples.

A network of inclusive schools in the region (Inclusive SchoolNet) has been established. In order to learn from each other a mixture of schools with different levels of inclusive education policies was selected.

The network consist of 49 schools (7 schools per Beneficiary:3 primary, 2 secondary general and 2 VET schools), each school nominated a team of 5 participants (including school principals, teachers and pedagogues, school board members and/or representative of parents), and thus the network as whole comprises 245 persons


This component will attempt to increase experience and knowledge about how schools can become more inclusive when making use of the different views of those involved. It will help increase understanding of inclusion in education of 49 schools and will help them develop inclusive cultures, policies and practices.

*  "This designation is without prejudice to positions on status and is in line with UNSCR 1244 and the ICJ opinion on the Kosovo Declaration of Independence"

A good school is an inclusive school

A special radio show on education called Out of the box on Croatian radio HRT was dedicated to inclusive education in Croatia and in the South Eastern Europe region. The show also covered the Conference Inclusive Education in Practice in Zagreb, 28-29 October 2014.

Publications

The project leaflet in the languages of the Beneficiaries can be downloaded by clicking on the following button:

Project leaflet


Latest news

An inclusive school is a democratic school: sharing experiences between SEE and Turkey

Fourteen primary school teachers from the South East Europe region will participate in a study visit to Edirne and Konya in Turkey, to learn more about inclusive cultures, policies and practices...

Photo gallery of the 2nd Annual Conference in South East Europe "Inclusive Education in Practice"

Inclusive School Net

 

implemented activities

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Small grants for greater inclusion

From raising awareness campaigns in Albania to the setting up a school radio station in Montenegro, and to the training of teachers on how to work with pupils coming from deprived environments in Serbia. Through projects like these, more than 10,000 pupils, teachers and parents in South Eastern Europe (SEE) will now have the chance to establish more inclusive school environments throughout the 2014/2015 school year.

For this to be achieved, a total of 49 pilot schools from the SEE region will receive small grants of up to €9,500, starting from this October (2014), as a direct support from the Joint European Union (EU) and Council of Europe (CoE) Project “Regional Support for Inclusive Education” in South East Europe.  

There are currently certain gaps in the understanding of inclusive practices and culture among parents, teachers, students and local community representatives and so the project proposals were prepared by specially formed school teams including teachers, parents, students and members of the local communities. These teams identified specific needs and priorities on how to achieve better educative inclusion, with the help of a total of 196 focus groups organized in the 49 pilot schools during the first half of 2014.

For many school teams, this was the first time they had ever worked on the development of a project proposal. By investing much time and energy, especially during the summer vacation, they succeeding in coming up with some quite remarkable project proposals, which will now be put into practice as a key step in the development and improvement of inclusive practices in the schools.

The projects supported by the small grants mostly include training and workshops for teachers, pupils and parents; campaigns for raising awareness about the values of inclusion; capacity building seminars and the purchase of equipment, all geared towards creating the school environments needed for greater inclusion of all children in the education process. 

The results of the small grants projects will be systematically collected and shared with the rest of the participants, partners in the project and the public, as a resource for inspiring and supporting similar actions and initiatives in the future.