All roads lead to Rome: EAPRIL Cloud 12's experience at ESHA 2025

When the European School Heads Association (ESHA) announced its biennial conference for school leaders — Rome ESHA 2025 — there was really no debate for not participating as EAPRIL Clouds. All roads lead to Rome, right?

And this time, they led straight to a conversation that couldn’t be more urgent.

The conference themes said it all:

• Leading Sustainability Education
• Leading a Learning Organization
• Leading Wellbeing for All Learners

These themes are not just timely; they are imperative for the future of our schools and our society. Leading a Learning Organization is crucial in our rapidly changing world. The pace of technological and societal change demands that our schools become adaptable, innovative, and forward-thinking. We must create environments where both students and staff are continually learning, growing, and preparing for an uncertain future.

So yes, going to Rome felt inevitable.

Leadership for developing schools as learning organizations is at the heart of the research agenda of EAPRIL Cloud 12 Leadership in Education (Leadership in Education - EAPRIL and the Platform for Leadership in Education (16) Platform Leiderschap in het Onderwijs | Groups | LinkedIn). When your core research focus aligns perfectly with a European conference theme, you pack your bags.

Thanks to funding from EAPRIL, we quite literally took the educational road to Rome.

A group of Dutch and Flemish researchers — all members of the Cloud Leadership in Education — joined forces to contribute a symposium on leadership for developing schools as learning organizations. But the conference was more than just a stage for presenting. It became a laboratory for thinking together. The energy of the symposium discussions, combined with our collaboration in Rome, pushed our research further. Conversations evolved into concrete outcomes. Ideas turned into a research agenda for cloud Leadership in Education and into practical tools. And those tools? They’re now freely available for school leaders and those who educate them via HEADstart | ESHA.

And of course, taking the ‘When in Rome, do as the Romans do’ motto seriously, we also enjoyed the city to the fullest — tourist style.