112 school headmasters were supported by 112 business mentors as part of the Leadership and Educational Management Academy
More than 750 teachers used the Alfabetar.ro digital platform during the 2022 – 2023 academic year
1,500 students improved their social-emotional skills owing to the HumanKind programme
14 grants for developing stand-alone projects were implemented in the Edu Networks schools
Bucharest, December 18, 2023. AVE (The Association for Values in Education) assists each and every year the transformation of the educational system in Romania through the projects and programmes it develops and implements in schools nationwide. As such, during the 2022 – 2023 academic year, more than 8,000 teachers, from 805 schools, were involved in AVE’s programmes: the Leadership and Educational Management Academy, Alfabetar, HumanKind or Edu Networks. These had an impact for nearly 129,000 students across the country.
According to the Annual activity report, the total budget allotted to the projects and programmes unrolled from September 2022 to August 2023 reached approximately 1.9 million Euro. The business sector supported AVE’s activity both financially and through direct involvement of businessmen, more than 500 of them taking part in at least one AVE endeavour, event or project.
“By means of the projects and programmes we run we intend to reach as many schools in Romania as possible, considering that we wish to see our involvement generate concrete results as our way of supporting the Romanian education system on its way to landing in Europe’s top 10 by 2035. To make this transformation possible, we take into account the most significant vectors for change: school headmasters and teachers. The results of the latest academic year show us that our projects generate real effects: nearly 129,000 students have better learning experiences, which renders us confident to continue”, stated Silvia Toth, AVE Educational Programmes Manager.
More than 100 school headmasters have developed their leadership skills through the Leadership and Educational Management Academy
For a school, the main vector for change is the headmaster, which is precisely why, through the Leadership and Educational Management Academy, AVE has supported school headmasters who wished to effect changes both on a professional and a personal level.
112 headmasters, supported by 112 business mentors, created from September 2022 to August 2023 action plans geared towards improving results and the settings where students and teachers carry out their activity. At the same time, 4,500 teachers were engaged in attaining the objectives set forth at a school level, with an impact for 60,000 students learning in those schools. The programme was carried out nationwide in schools across 29 counties, most of them from Ilfov (14 schools) and Iași (12 schools).
The Leadership and Educational Management Academy had two action points. The first one dealt with acknowledging and developing skills specific to the headmaster role, and the second with identifying and improving the school’s area that required more attention. For the first action point, a tool called the Headmaster standard was created, as a self-assessment of one’s leadership and management capabilities. In terms of identifying areas that required improvements, 31% of the headmasters opted for improving the school culture and boosting community involvement, 30% for the teaching staff’s professional development and involvement, 27% for improving students’ results and 12% for boosting students’ access to education and school attendance.
Each headmaster was companied throughout the programme by a business mentor, who had a crucial role in the process of acquiring the management and leadership capabilities, identifying issues, resources and drafting an implementation plan. The business mentor added up to the training and transformation experience of the headmasters in the programme, with a particular emphasis also placed on acknowledging and celebrating the latter’s progress, efforts and successes.
Alfabetar – the online platform designed to prevent and lower literacy gaps
Primary school teachers play a crucial role in developing the writing and reading skills pupils acquire by the end of the 4th grade. The Alfabetar.ro platform provides teachers, free of charge, with solutions easy to use in class, aligned to the school syllabus, relying on 600 texts from accredited student coursebooks.
During the 2022 – 2023 academic year, Alfabetar.ro was used by 757 teachers, who were able to choose from among the 25,000 existing literacy exercises, resulting 150,000 interactions with the platform. Teachers can choose the module and the coursebook text they wish to use in class and enjoy a range of over 100 strategies and methods, but also suggestions and advice to apply among students.
The available resources were created keeping in mind the end beneficiary: the pupil. Primary school teachers can test the pupils’ literacy level and adjust interventions according to the progress achieved following the learning journey.
HumanKind for the development of social-emotional education among teachers
HumanKind, the social-emotional education programme developed by AVE in partnership with MindUP, made it possible to create an SEL (social-emotional learning) curriculum the teachers are able to apply in class. Completed in August 2023, HumanKind was implemented in 12 schools, allowing the headmasters, accompanied by 60 teachers, to attend more than 80 hours of courses dealing with children’s development needs by age group, non-violent communication, mindfulness, positive psychology, neuroscience. Each school benefitted from a mentor in the form of a psychologist or a psychotherapist, which guided the team throughout the programme. In total, the project was effective for 1,500 students.
The teachers enhanced their capacity of reinforcing the students’ social-emotional development. The results showed that the students from the schools involved achieved visibly reduced aggressiveness scores and higher scores for attention and social-emotional skills. Although the programme was not directly intended for parents, the teachers perceived improved relationships with the former.
Approximately 75% of the participating teachers believe that the programme’s positive results will be present in the long run, the intervention being deemed sustainable to a large and very large extent.
14 grants amounting to 147,887 Euro for the schools in Edu Networks
The September 2022 – August 2023 period witnessed the fourth and last year of Edu Networks, a programme that covered 114 schools and kindergartens in Romania, organised nationwide under two clusters keeping in mind the geographic proximity among them: Bacău, Bistrița-Năsăud, Brad, Bucharest-Ilfov, Buzău, Dâmbovița, Galați, Olt and Valea Jiului.
During this past year, as part of an AVE-coordinated intervention, 14 grants were accessed for a total value of 147,887 Euro; each cluster received and implemented at least one. The grants aimed to develop teaching, leadership or school management skills, as well as to provide solutions that address development or transformation needs identified across several schools or several school clusters. This intervention also pursued getting the schools familiar with accessing and managing external resources.
Run over a four-year period (September 2019 – August 2023), the Edu Networks programme was coordinated by AVE and implemented with the support of eight non-profit organisations specialised in education and had an effective impact for 3,600 teachers and 64,000 students and pre-school pupils.
The educational partners AVE worked in conjunction with from September 2022 to August 2023 are: Adservio, Brio, Bucharest Teaching Staff Resource Center, Digital Nation, EDUS, Empaticus Association, Go-Ahead Association, HoltIS Association, HumanInvest, InfinitEdu Association, Inim Institute, Interact, Kinderpedia, The Romanian Reading and Writing for Critical Thinking Association, Marco Polo, Mind Education, MindUP, MM Consulting, ROI Association, Romanian Gifted School, Școala de Valori Association, SELLification4EDUcation Association, SuperTeach Association, Teach for Romania Association, The Learning Future, The Social Incubator Association and Verita Foundation.
About AVE (The Association for Values in Education)
The Association for Values in Education (AVE) is a non-profit organisation whose main goal is to bring the educational system in Romania to Europe’s top 10 by 2035. AVE wishes to support the transformation of the educational system in Romania into one that promotes respect, honesty, team spirit and responsibility. You can stay in touch with AVE’s endeavours by following the LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram pages.