Anatoly G. Kasprzhak

In late October, the ‘Grow with HSE University!’ forum was held in Moscow. The forum aimed at encouraging an exchange of best academic practices and cultivating cooperation between the University and various schools. Teachers and administrators from 76 regions of Russia and 16 countries took part. Over 3,500 people signed up for the forum, and even more people joined the events online. The plenary discussion alone was watched online by over 15,000 people.

The latest session of the IOE Weekly Seminar Series on Education R&D brought together a premier cohort of academics to discuss findings from a massive School Barometer survey of education stakeholders that spanned a landscape as wide and diverse as Russia, Switzerland, Germany, and Austria. The project outcomes suggest that Russian schooling is still not particularly good at nurturing in students the key ingredients of agency, such as independence, proactive thinking, and self-discipline.

On June 22, several HSE lecturers and staff members were awarded the status of Tenured Professor at a meeting of HSE Academic Council. Sixteen HSE staff members became Distinguished Professors at the Higher School of Economics for the first time.

The Centre for Developing Leadership in Education at the HSE Institute of Education is starting a project to study school heads in 16 Russian regions to make recommendations for a professional development and training programme. The project will become part of the international comparative research on school heads, the Asia Leadership Project, which HSE signed up to a year ago at a conference in Malaysia.