News & Events

The closing conference of the Erasmus+ policy experimentation project “A New Way for New Talents in Teaching (NEWTT)” took place in Sofia, Bulgaria, on March 14, 2019. Over the last 3 years, NEWTT, a consortium of 15 partners – across five European countries and co-financed by the European Union through the Erasmus+ program – designed, implemented, and evaluated five alternative pathways to teacher recruitment and certification. This project was developed in an effort to help find innovative solutions to education challenges felt all over Europe, such as teacher shortages, inconsistent teaching quality, and limited teacher force diversity. The closing conference was the perfect opportunity for the partners in the consortium to share the results of NEWTT, our plans for their exploitation, the lessons learned along the way, and to give the floor to the participants and organizations that contributed to its encouraging results and findings. The forum brought together teachers, principals, union leaders, politicians, university professors, and other crucial stakeholders. Our partners from the evaluation team at the University of Duisburg-Essen presented the final evaluation report which you can download from this page.       

Best practices on the recruitment, selection, training, professional support, and retention of motivated teachers were presented at The Future of Education. Driven by the desire to make education in Bulgaria even better, 11 leading organizations joined efforts to organize The Future of Education Conference 2018.The two-day forum took place at the National Palace of Culture in Sofia, Bulgaria, on November 23-24. Over 1000 people registered for the event which gave them the opportunity to meet with representatives from over 30 organizations at a special expo and learn more about a variety of successful practices on public-private partnerships, vocational and digital education, financial literacy, and NEWTT-inspired best practices on the recruitment, selection, training, professional support, and retention of motivated teachers. Prof. Dr. Herman Abs, Chair of Educational research and Schooling at the University of Duisburg-Essen gave a compelling presentation on how to attract young talent to the teaching profession and cited some successful practices implemented by all non-governmental organizations, part of the Teach For All global network and partners in NEWTT. He also participated in a panel which discussed how to make teaching more attractive and accessible. Prof. Galin Tsokov from Plovdiv University participated in a panel dedicated to teacher professional development and qualification. He also talked about the innovative qualification programs which the university had the opportunity to develop and test thanks to NEWTT.     

NEWTT was presented at the 16th Annual International Comparative Education Conference organized by the Bulgarian Comparative Education Society (BCES). This year the conference took place in Golden Sands, Varna, from June 11 to June 15. The theme “Education in Modern Society” inspired and brought together over 40 scholars and researchers from all over the world who presented their latest research findings, exchanged ideas, and discussed global trends and challenges in the education sector. Dr. Neli Koleva, Chief Officer of Public Partnerships at Teach For Bulgaria and Maya Stoyanova Warner, Teach For Bulgaria alumna, co-authored a paper entitled “ ‘A New Way for New Talents in Teaching’ or the Impact of Targeted Recruitment, Rigorous Selection, Innovative Training, and Ongoing Professional Support on Beginner Teachers’ Performance”. Maya Stoyanova Warner presented the paper at the conference as part of Thematic Section 3 - Education Policy, Reforms & School Leadership, chaired by Dr. Gillian Hilton, Middlesex University London, United Kingdom.   

Dr. Neli Koleva, Chief officer of Public Partnerships at Teach For Bulgaria, had the opportunity to present NEWTT at the “Vocational Education and Training (VET) as a First Choice” conference which took place on April 24-25 in Sofia. The conference was organized by the Ministry of Education and Science as part of the Bulgarian Presidency of the Council of the EU. The conference was opened by the Deputy Minister of Education and Science, Denitsa Sacheva. Neli Koleva had the opportunity to address all guests, present “A New Way for New Talents in Teaching”, and share good practices and lessons learned from the project.

ExE were invited to participate in the “VIII University conference on educational innovation” at Deusto University to present the NEWTT pilot as a product of the collaboration between ExE and Deusto University. The main objective of this conference was to share Best Practices from different members of the university community and have the opportunity to present and/or listen to those practices that are carried out in the University and can serve as a model and guide for others.         

On Saturday 14th April 2018 a National Dissemination event was organized in Barcelona with participants, educational stakeholders and other political influencers. InspirExE is a national education event where teaching induction programs -like NEWTT- and their impact in equity was the focus.International and national speakers shared their experience and best practices related to teaching induction programs. InspirExE was a key milestone for the dissemination of NEWTT project where the attendees learnt about and reflected on the importance of teacher training and induction programs.