The priority project includes research-based development activities with high focus on development and co-ordination mainly at systemic level but also at school level that build on bottom-up initiatives and networking. In related actions workshops, expert discourses and local innovations play key roles. The umbrella project (as well as each individual projects within) relies on regional professional networks in putting new developments as well as already existing services of the educational market into practice thereby ensuring that development enterprises serve public interest and real needs in the related regions. Regional networks and the umbrella projects therefore jointly support public educational institutions in completing their tasks and undertakings in introducing competency-based teaching and learning.

Most key concepts and aims of the project are to facilitate public education towards attaining some of its overall missions such as inclusion, parity balancing and providing access for all to quality education while nurturing innovations and supporting existing learning networks and communities of practice. In the journey to achieving these important goals, ICT serves as an important tool at all levels from research-based development to dissemination and practice and for that reason innovative use of info-communication gets a strong emphasis in the overall process.

These aims of “21st Century Public Education - development coordination” project are realized by individual projects that are organised around nine pillars. These pillars are hosted by two institutions which teamed up to execute the tasks contracted in the Social Renewal Program 3.1.1 tender. The Hungarian Institute for Educational Research and Development (Oktatáskutató és Fejlesztő Intézet, OFI) conducts pillars 6,7 and 8 while Educatio Public Utility Company (Educatio Társadalmi Szolgáltató Nonprofit Kht.) governs the other ones.

The nine pillars of Social Renewal Program 3.1.1 are as follows:

Pillar 1: Inspiring and supporting the formation of development-coordination network and horizontal collaborations with the aim to create a system of toolkits which supports regional, sub-regional and micro-level public educational strategies, developments and equity/parity programmes

Pillar 2: Supporting content development with the aim of contributing to a paradigm shift in textbook market and backing up the expansion of the implementation of the National Core Curriculum

Pillar 3: Supporting the renewal of pedagogy and didactics with the aim of enriching school culture, fostering innovative teaching methods and efficient ways of instruction to promote the transfer towards competency based education

Pillar 4: Actions related to providing equal access to educational services for special needs students focusing on preparing and supplying a toolkit for content- and instructional development, special services and network coordination that helps the inclusion of students

Pillar 5: Operating a system that provides complex e-learning, digital pedagogy and content services and competency development activities, including establishing a solid toolkit that assist the collaboration of stakeholders and actors in digital pedagogy and acts towards the improvement of the efficiency of public education

Pillar 9: Developing systems to support the overall modernization of public educational systems from the central administration side including a systemic database following up professional development activities and budgeting-planning system

Pillars 6,7 and 8 hosted by our Institute focus on finding possible solutions to relevant social problems, supporting evidence-based educational policy and making policy recommendations based on research and development activities and expert workshops, bridging the gaps between real-life practice and theoretical approaches to education or legal prescriptions.

Despite the fact that beyond all efforts tangible results need time and most of them can only be observed on a longer time-scale, we have got several promising feed-back from partners and can already detect signs of change, such as:

• 10% of local authorities responsible for the maintenance of schools apply evidence-based policy decision making as a practice;
• inclusive appoach became established in some 500 partner schools (including pre-school, primary and secondary school levels), which represent some one-fourth of such institutions;
• target groups consider the written and online resources produced by the project useful and have been willing to pilot with new methods or suggestions.