One of the key challenges, project partners have realized in the intense work with school principals, is their low awareness about the power they have in contributing to key changes in their profession.

As additional HEAD activity for Croatian school principals, on Feb 2nd and 3rd the ADVOCACY training for school principals and NGOs took place in Croatia for both primary and secondary school principals. The aim of the training was to strengthen the advocacy competencies of participants for quality principals professional development in inclusive leadership in order to empower them to multiply the effect of HEAD project and advocate for quality PD for principals on topic of inclusive leadership.

The training was held by advocacy experts from association Parents in Action (RODA)

School principals and project partners had the opportunity to deeply examine main concepts of advocacy, methods for raising awareness and for engaging citizens, as well as how to clearly and accurately formulate the message and how to adapt them to different targets, how to identify the topics and develop plan that define objectives, targets, methods and expected results.

School principals identified several challenges related to their profession: the lack of standards and measurables indicators for evaluation, lack of mentoring for principals and combination of high responsibility and low level of autonomy. In relation to the identified issues they discussed the changes they aim to achieve, the possible partners and appropriate advocacy methods.

The two days of intense sharing and learning contributed to clarifying concepts related to advocacy and to empower school principals to advocate for their profession and play an active yet responsible role in initiate bottom-up changes. Participants realized the relevance of professional association of school principals and how they may reinforce their role as members of experts groups. The title of this article is one of the positive feedback participants shared in the evaluation that shows they really reinforced their knowledge about key topics for their profession such as how to communicate with stakeholders, media, how to engage wide public…all participants stated in the evaluation that they plan to use the knowledge acquired in the training.

Several follow-up activities were agreed as part of the HEAD policy component – stay tuned!