Directors of the Year Awards 2023: 73 jurors donate over 750 hours to select transformative school directors in Romania

 More than 70 business and education experts responded to AVE’s (Association for Values in Education) invitation to participate in the selection of school directors who, through their projects, are transforming their schools and communities.

For seven years, AVE has been identifying and rewarding directors from public and private high schools, schools and kindergartens in Romania who make a difference, at the Directors of the Year Awards Gala. This year, business leaders representing Romania’s largest employers, representatives of NGOs with expertise in education, students, school principals who have won previous editions, journalists, and representatives from the Ministry of Education agreed to be involved in the judging process, which took over 750 hours.

“At AVE, we are aware of the strategic and essential role that a school director plays in the entire community. The Directors of the Year Awards Gala aims to do just that, to openly recognize and appreciate the effort put forth by people with real leadership skills who, through vision and dedication, inspire generations of students to love school and their peers to see that it can be done, to try, even with scarce resources, and to be the best they can be. This is also why the judging stage is a complex process, but also an important moment in the process of selecting the winning school principals,” says Radu Manolescu, Managing Partner K.M. Trust Group and co-founder and President of AVE Romania.

The selection and judging for the Director of the Year Awards Gala is a multi-stage process with a complex and rigorous approach. The judging panels assigned to each award category (Innovation, Entrepreneurship, Equal Opportunities and Director of the Year) are composed of a minimum of seven members, so that the evaluation of the applications submitted by the directors covers complementary angles of expertise.

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Different eligibility criteria are followed for each category. Thus, for Innovation, we are looking for leaders who think differently, find innovative solutions, approach a chronic problem in the school they lead in a completely different way. In the Entrepreneurship category, principals whose initiatives demonstrate entrepreneurial efficiency in situations where resources are not sufficient are rewarded, and in the Equal Opportunities category, principals who succeed in bringing vulnerable students in their communities closer to school. The Grand Prize will be awarded to the school principal who surprises with exceptional leadership qualities, vision and outstanding results that make a difference for children.

The Director of the Year Awards Gala is a unique event in Romania, bringing to the public’s attention the success stories of educational leaders in Romanian schools. This year, more than 200 principals from almost every county in the country applied for one of the four awards in the categories of Innovation, Equal Opportunities, Entrepreneurship and the grand prize, Principal of the Year 2023.

Because we want the winning school principals to be further supported in the transformation process, each of them will receive a prize of €3,500 and a place in the Romanian School Transformation Program, launched this autumn by AVE.  

The seventh edition of the Directors of the Year Awards Gala will take place on 9th October at the Romanian Athenaeum.