When schools work together, whether in networks, clusters or partnerships, a range of goals can be achieved, including supporting horizontal decision-making and solving complex problems; sharing responsibilities and creating synergies between stakeholders; promoting knowledge-sharing and the dissemination of practice and enable innovations to evolve more quickly; and many others. (European Commission, 2018) 1
Joint working between schools can range from cooperation – to share information, resources and expertise – to collaboration, to produce an output that no single school or person can achieve in isolation.
School-to-school mentoring
Transferring and scaling innovation related to digital technologies in school education is an ongoing policy challenge across Europe. At individual teacher level, peer-to-peer networking and mentoring – an experienced teacher guiding and supporting a less experienced one – are effective mechanisms for career-long professional learning. However, at whole-school level, such approaches are less widespread despite the evidence for their potential.
School-to-school mentoring entails holistic, active collaboration between two or more establishments for specific purposes, such as professional development, to overcome isolation or overall organisational improvement. Such mentoring often takes place through school networks but there can be large differences in outcomes, depending on factors such as whether participation is voluntary or compulsory, instigated externally or internally, or recognised and supported by education authorities. It is therefore important to understand better how ‘top-down' and ‘bottom-up' approaches work and to explore different incentives and rewards that can motivate schools to be become engaged in whole-school peer learning.
The report "School-to-school mentoring in Europe – Models of whole-school peer networking"
The report gives the readers an overview of the state of the art in school-to-school mentoring in Europe and an outline of effective and affordable models and scalable strategies.
It aims to describe different types of mentoring between schools in Europe, including examples and case studies, with particular reference to models of digitally supported innovation and solving shared challenges between schools. Digital products used to support mentoring are also be analysed and recommendations made.
The report comprises six sections:
- The methodology used to gather and analyse information
- The rationale behind mentoring between schools
- Top-down models of school collaboration
- Bottom-up models of school collaboration
- Success factors in school-to-school mentoring
