As the conference of the European School Heads Association is taking place in Tallinn, Estonia, this week, it might be time to have a look at how heads can use the Web to learn from their peers in Europe.
The School Managers Centre for the European School Net has more than 300 heads from across Europe registered on its pages.
Each provides contact details and basic information about their school, usually with Web addresses. Direct head-to-head contact with Greece, the Czech Republic, France or Malta is only a click away.
The centre also provides best-practice reports (in up to four languages) on what is working on the continent.
A good example is the survey on “How school managers learn” from the professional association of school principals in the Netherlands.
The Dutch organisation found that heads’ demand for well co-ordinated and practical in-service training had still not been met in most parts of Europe. Currently, the one country that legally requires all heads to have a headship qualification is Italy.
The European centre can be found at: www.eun.orgeun.org2eunindex_smc.cfm Readers can email suggestions on future Internet Insights to Sam Saunders at J.P.Saunders@leeds.ac.uk
