Building data wisdom, one school at a time

Why SCHOOLWISE exists

European schools now generate more data than at any point in their history: attendance records, assessment results, platform engagement logs, survey responses, well-being indicators. Across Italy, Germany, Austria, Belgium, Spain, France and the Netherlands, progress on using that data well has been real but uneven. Much of it stays fragmented across separate systems, gets interpreted inconsistently between schools, or is used mainly for reporting upward rather than for improving teaching. The gap isn't primarily technical: it's professional. Most educators are expected to interpret data without the training, time or guidance to do it well, and without a shared European framework for doing it ethically.

SCHOOLWISE (Building Data Wisdom and Governance in Schools for Evidence-Informed Educational Improvement) is an Erasmus+ Forward-Looking project addressing that gap directly. Running from March 2026 to February 2029 and coordinated by CNR (Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Italy), it brings together research organisations, universities, school networks and a European school-leader association to help schools move from simply collecting data to using it responsibly, ethically and pedagogically, in line with the GDPR and the AI Act.

Twelve partners, one framework

Delivering on that ambition takes more than one discipline. SCHOOLWISE is implemented by a consortium of twelve beneficiaries, coordinated by CNR (Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Italy) through its Institute of Educational Technology, together with six associated partners, including schools and regional education authorities, supporting the pilot phase.

CNR-ITD
Italy ESHA
Netherlands UOC
Spain TU Graz
Austria UCLL
Belgium UNIBO
Italy NEST Berlin
Germany PRIVANOVA
France PFE
Belgium TU Dresden
Germany Escola Pia
Spain · pilot school ICIC Fratelli Cervi
Italy · pilot school

Project coordination and work-package leadership run in a clear chain across the consortium: CNR (Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Italy) coordinates SCHOOLWISE overall and leads WP1 (project management and quality assurance); Graz University of Technology (TU Graz, Austria) leads WP2 (state-of-the-art analysis and conceptual framework); Technische Universität Dresden (TU Dresden, Germany) leads WP3 (co-design and toolkit development); Alma Mater Studiorum – Università di Bologna (UNIBO, Italy) leads WP4 (piloting and validation); Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC, Spain) leads WP5 (evaluation of project results), and is developing the SCHOOLWISE Educational Data Literacy Framework; and the European School Heads Association (ESHA, Netherlands) leads WP6 (dissemination, exploitation, scaling-up and sustainability).

Quality is checked twice over: internally, through a dedicated Internal Quality Review Board, and externally, through an Independent Advisory Board of five education and data-policy experts drawn from the piloting countries and one potential roll-out country, who review the project's major outputs before they are finalised. A separate Ethics Advisory Board oversees data protection and research-ethics compliance throughout.

Later in the project, each partner will also run a Local Multiplier Event in its own country, at least 30 participants each, bringing SCHOOLWISE's results directly to local schools and policymakers and building toward a European Final Conference in the project's final year.

From data to wisdom: the DIKW approach

SCHOOLWISE builds on the Data–Information–Knowledge–Wisdom (DIKW) model, a framework for how raw facts become sound judgement. In a school context: Data is the raw record, a grade, an attendance mark, a click in a learning platform. Information is that record placed in context: attendance patterns read alongside performance. Knowledge is what educators make of those patterns: an interpretation that can guide teaching. Wisdom is the ethical, context-aware decision that connects the data back to its educational purpose.

Rather than treating this as a rigid ladder, SCHOOLWISE uses it as a flexible scaffold for building data literacy, one that respects how teachers and school leaders actually learn: iteratively, and rarely in a straight line. Four objectives anchor the work:

What we're hearing from schools

Starting in spring 2026, the SCHOOLWISE research team in WP2 (overseen by TU Graz) began direct engagement with teachers and school leaders. By the time data collection concluded in early July, the teacher and school-leader survey had achieved the following levels of participation across the partner countries. In addition to this, interviews and focus groups were conducted in several partner countries, providing qualitative evidence on the same research strand, already promoting a clear path for the future of the SCHOOLWISE project.

This reflects the reach achieved so far rather than research findings. The WP2 State-of-the-Art and Good Practices Report (D2.1) is still being finalised. The second newsletter will be the first issue to present the emerging insights from the research and framework development.

What's next