School teams participating in ESLTI in Spain have completed their national training and are now preparing to put their innovation ideas into practice during the new school year.
The main training took place on 16 and 17 July 2026, bringing together school leaders and teachers from different parts of Spain. With participating schools located in Cantabria, Castilla-La Mancha, Madrid and Andalusia, the sessions combined face-to-face and online participation. A follow-up session was then held at the beginning of September, before the start of the school year.
The Spanish trainers and school teams describe the experience very positively. Participation was high and the schools came to the training with a strong interest in improving their practice. Several already have considerable experience in educational innovation, including IES Bahía Marbella and CEIP Luis Vives in Jerez de la Frontera, whose work in this area has received recognition from the Regional Ministry of Education of Andalusia.
Much of the work focused on a simple question: what does each school actually want to improve?
Rather than discussing innovation only in general terms, the teams identified the needs and challenges they want to work on during their Innovation Labs. This led to very practical discussions about teacher workload, available resources, staff involvement, the role of school leadership and the support of families and the wider school community.
One of the most useful ideas to emerge from the training was to connect schools facing similar challenges. The Spanish team decided to introduce “mirror teams”, pairing schools so that they can follow each other’s work, exchange experiences and provide an outside perspective as their Innovation Labs develop.
This means that schools will not work on their innovation plans in isolation. They will be able to compare what happens in practice, discuss difficulties and learn from another school working on a similar challenge. The trainers see this as a useful way to establish shared objectives and responsibilities and to assess more clearly what works and what does not.
The meetings were also an opportunity to test the draft Guide to Sustainable Innovations in Schools against the reality of school life. The feedback was practical: participants would like more real school examples, clearer explanations of some concepts and more support for planning what happens after an innovation has been introduced.
One point came through particularly clearly. A good idea is not necessarily a sustainable one. Schools also have to consider the time, people and resources needed to keep it going. The feedback therefore proposes giving more attention to continuity, shared responsibility and regular review. It also suggests strengthening the sections on digital transformation and artificial intelligence, while keeping the focus on their educational purpose and practical value for schools.
The September follow-up brought the Spanish group together again as schools prepared for the new academic year. The next step is now in the schools themselves: taking the needs identified during the training and turning them into concrete Innovation Labs.
As the Spanish trainers conclude in their evaluation, the national training is only the “beginning”. The real work now lies in testing these ideas in schools, learning from the experience and finding ways to make useful changes last.