IDEAL Future Work Package 2 Report

5 Objective Question Explore teachers and educational leaders' experiences of digital learning leadership What are educators and educational leaders experiences of digital learning? Identify the key challenges, problems and dilemmas facing pre-service and in-service teachers in a digital era at individual, school and community levels What are the current and future challenges teachers and educators face in a digital era at individual, school and community levels? Consider the challenges in the context of the digital leadership ecosystem from the perspectives of policy, praxis, pedagogy What has influenced these challenges to emerge at a broad ecosystems level? Formulate narratives based on the experiences and challenges to enable teachers and educational leaders to identity opportunities for teachers to re-envision and lead a transformative approach to digital leadership in education based on these challenges Table 1: Summary of the WP2 project objectives and associated research questions This report documents the findings from the interviews on the Current and Future Challenges Facing Digital Educational Leaders face in France, Ireland, Latvia and Spain. 1.2 An overview of the educational system within the partner countries The educational system in each country is similar with slight variations. In most countries it is mandatory to attend education from the age of 6, with the exception of France in which mandatory schooling starts at 3 years old. With the exception of France, pre-school education is not compulsory in most countries but is funded by the state and is at the discretion of the parent. In Latvia mandatory education starts form age of 5 when children attend preschool education but they start attending schools from age of 7. In all countries but Ireland there are four levels of education, with secondary education being divided into two levels. In Ireland, students attend one second level school for five to six years, even though the curriculum is divided into two cycles. The state funds school education in all countries, however in France this is shared with local authorities, companies and families via a taxation system. Teachers direct teaching workload varies across levels of education and countries, usually primary teachers have a higher teaching load than those in second level. In addition workload can vary significantly between countries ranging from 18 hours to 30 hours. See table 2 below for summary.