International Symposium for Innovative Practices, Policy Makers and Stakeholders – Transitions: making schools ready for young children and families

International symposium was held as the final event in the START project. Under the leadership of the Belgian partner VBJK, the consortium organised the event in Brussels, in the premises of the Flemish Government.

Around 90 preschool and primary school professionals, policy makers and other interested stakeholders attended the symposium, where partners presented the project, its intellectual outputs and final results on the topic of transitions across the home environment, early childhood services and primary schools, which was researched in the framework of the project. All results are available here: http://start.pei.si/results/.

We were pleased to have the opportunity to listen to policy makers from different countries: representative of the European Commision, Ms. Geraldine Libreau, Ms. Sara De Meerlee, Leen Ardui, and Filip Winderickx from Belgium, Ms. Francesca Puglisi from Italy and Ms. Brigita Mark from Slovenia. The panel was facilitated by Prof. Dr. ichel Vandenbroeck from the University of Ghent.

In the afternoon, researchers and practitioners from partner institutions held round tables, where they discussed their work in their pilots in each country.

Country leading partners met in Ghent in order to work on the final outputs and on the organsation of the project’s final event, which will take place in Brussels, on 26th April 2019.

We invite you to follow our website to see when you can register to the event, where you will hear more about our final outputs.

On Friday, 26 April 2019, the START consortium is organizing an international symposium, where partners will present the project and its results with implications for practice and policies, which were developed based on their experience during the project.

The event will offer the opportunity to listen and open a dialogue with researchers and practitioners of different countries on the pedagogical guidance of transitional practices.

Programme: International Symposium for Innovative Practices, Policy Makers and Stakeholders

Bologna

In May, members of the consortium gathered in Bologna for a three-day interim meeting.

The first day we went to Vignola, where we visited preschool “Collodi” and primary school “Moro”. ECEC practitioners and primary school teachers cooperate with us in the project, therefore it was a great opportunity to see in person the environment, which is researched within START. We were also invited to the International Children’s Theatre Festival in Marano where we enjoyed in a great musical about Mary Poppins, performed by local pupils.

The following two days were dedicated to discussions on further action-plans for the last period of the project.

Photos

 © C. Boudry

The second international training week was held in Tišina (Slovenia) and was hosted by Primary school Tišina in cooperation with the Educational Research Institute. There were 30 ECEC practitioners, primary school teachers and researchers from England, Belgium, Italy and Slovenia participating in the training.

The main topics of the week were observation and reflection.

See our week in the photos below:

• Training Tišina, part 1
• Training Tišina, part 2
• Training Tišina, part 3

The partner organisation from England Pen Green cooperates with Rockingham Primary School and Our Lady of Walsingham Catholic Primary: Presentation United Kingdom

The partner organisation VBJK cooperates with Mezennestje day-care centre and Kolva kindergarten: Presentation Belgium

The partner organisation UNIBO cooperates with Direzione Didattica di Vignola: Presentation Italy