Towards Knowledge driven Society and Professions of the Future
The 25th Steering Group (SG) Meeting of Priority Area 7 (PA7) was organized on June 2, 2023 as a hybrid
event.
We were also pleased to have the Inclusion4Schools project participate in the event, contributing valuable insights and initiatives on fostering inclusive education.
“Mr Béla Kardon (Regional Centre for Information and Scientific Development, Hungary) prepared a
short presentation about enhancing access and uptake of education to reverse inequalities via their
Inclusion4Schools project. Mr Kardon said that although he is usually representing the research policies
and research and innovation projects, at this moment he will talk about the current European challenges
connected to education, such as rising inequalities in Europe, growing social disadvantages and
disparities, trail behind in access and uptake of education, and about reversing inequalities to enhance
economic growth, democracy and equal opportunities for our future generations. All these topics are
addressed within the Inclusion4School project which central objective is to support segregated schools in
underprivileged regions, in the formation of bonds with their immediate social environments. The aim is
to facilitate the emergence of solidary and inclusive school communities and strengthen cooperation of
various stakeholders (between teachers, students, parents, social workers, municipal workers, civil
activists, researchers and policy makers), to interact with the two parallel running RIA projects to
enhance synergies and cooperation between them and amongst the relevant stakeholders and to
generate networks for research and policy development. To achieve these objectives, the project partners
create professional services like knowledge sharing platforms, evaluation and dissemination of “good
practices”. The consortium partners of the project are mainly from the Danube region (Bulgaria, Hungary
and Slovakia + Albania) but with their activities the project partners attempt to reach out to a worldwide
audience, trying to make a difference in education. When speaking about the challenges, Mr Kardon
mentioned these three levels: 1. Project (educate and train project partners), 2. External partners (to
make the project interesting to various stakeholders) 3. Global (especially the effect of the pandemics).
Furthermore, the work packages of the project and their main outcomes were introduced, more than 120
of events were organized (such as such as think-thank workshops, monitoring workshops, conferences,
awareness rising events, open school classes, online focus group discussions), methodologies and
transformative practices were developed, summer and winter schools were organized. All participants
were invited to check more information on project achievements at the project official website and were
kindly invited to save the date to the next international conference taking place on 28-29 November this
year.”