Results

The Educational Innovation topic raises much interest among different groups. Most agree on the need for education systems to catch up with the state-of-play about learning tools and methods and to provide children and youths with skills and capacities beyond what the curricula teaches in the classroom. The ON BOARD experience proves that Municipal governments can make a difference in framing the discussions, encouraging community inter-actions, generating cooperation across sectors, and supporting knowledge flows amongst the key education agents in the city to do just that. Fostering collaboration and sharing moments is an essential practice for learning and improvements in all of the above.

Cooperation and teamwork between education centres and between schools and other local agents is opening up the classroom to the neighbourhood and the city. There have been first and important steps towards building a local Network at the district level -Nantes, Poznan, Halmstad and Tallinn- or city level – Viladecans, Albergaria-a-Velha by means of concrete projects to test-drive their first collaborative experiences.

The first results of the networking experience have translated into concrete Pilot Projects in Primary and Secondary schools, in collaboration with external stakeholders. These Pilots not only aim to help teachers and others enrich the education ecosystem with new ideas and practices, but to expose students to complex and real-life situations for which they will need -in the spirit of lifelong learning – even more learning and 21st Century skills-building. Students developing measurement devices in the framework of an environmental project within their neighbourhood; children and adolescents exploring and sharing their emotions and feelings; schools participating in projects led by the European Space Agency; Master students talking about healthy habits and how they impact on learning capacities, are but just a few.

Commitment -mostly from mayors and vice mayors- and the capacity to mobilise local people and resources, has been key to project success in ON BOARD, as well as in other URBACT Transfer Networks. This is particularly true for smaller partner cities where direct access to local policy makers can make it more agile to react and advance in transfer steps and formalize effective changes. Unfortunately, it is also true for these smaller players that when the unexpected pandemic crisis hit, fewer resources, in particular human resources, were available, which left them in a very difficult position to continue project activities.

The transnational level of work, involving local agents who would otherwise not participate in a European project, strongly motivated local stakeholders and contributed to a heightened self-confidence about each one’s work and potential. In addition, these local stakeholders, when seeing the transfer of their own Education projects to other cities, who have adopted them as Pilots, have gained international recognition, which positively reinforces their own local “role” as educational innovators in each city. Inviting out-of-silo peers at transnational meetings has also proved to be a success. The direct contact in a working atmosphere of teachers, entrepreneur’s’ associations, youth clubs, universities, a super-computer research centre, and Education officers, among others, has helped transform mindsets and practices.

At the later stage of the transfer period, some transfer sprouts are seen. Viladecans has seen relevant changes where its local education system is adjusting to a more collaborative and networking approach. Tallinn Council decided to split Youth and Sports Department and merge the first one with the Education Department, which is now dealing with the young population, from babies to citizens the age of 26. Halmstad saw improved collaboration between its 2 Education Departments of Primary and Secondary levels and allocated new human resources and municipal budget to continue the Educational Innovation Network activities in the city. Albergaria-a-Velha has supported the consolidation of the Education Network as a permanent community of practice in the city and has allocated significant budget for technological upgrading of local schools.

Finally, the lead partner city, Viladecans, has found the transfer experience truly enlightening, benefitting in many ways from the ‘teaching’ role it has played. Though Viladecans had already had a solid track record in its own Educational Innovation Network, ON BOARD proved to be the perfect vehicle for it to focus on areas it set out to address. By sharing its Good Practice with others, Viladecans’ came to recognize its own strengths and potential for improvements thanks to the joint work with its ON BOARD partners.

Organized communication for the respective Educational Innovation Networks is at an incipient stage too, and mostly relies on the transfer leaders who have participated in ON BOARD activities. Although we have succeeded in creating internal communication and exchange flows, these still need support and driving from the municipal Departments for the purposes of growing and strengthening the Educational Innovation Networks’ interactions.

A change of educational mindset has been detected among different stakeholders in partner cities – for more cooperation, not competition, to name just one shift in thinking. Teachers and other local members have diversified their professional relations locally and got inspiration from peer-to-peer exchanges taking place at international events, too. They now report understanding that new ways of making education happen are within their reach. However, a cultural change in the respective education systems has yet to take place at a wider scale, in particular where these are rigid and bureaucratized, and thus less willing – or able – to bring in and use innovative practices and approaches.