The Education for 21st Century involves the development of key skills for citizens to adapt to the instability, the continuous change and uncertainty characteristic of this Century. In fact, the acquisition of these key skills is assumed to be a route to economic prosperity, reduced income inequalities and social cohesion. Great efforts have been done within the European Union to move towards a competence-based approach, especially in the area of teacher education. Teachers are believed to be a cornerstone for competence-based education models to success. Some teacher competence frameworks to guide initial and developmental teacher education paths have been developed around the world, for instance in the EU, the USA and Asia. However, there is not a global teacher education competence framework. In addition, some countries are currently at the back of the competence-based education approach. This is particularly the case of China where teacher education programmes are divided in specialities and, therefore, teachers lack a cross-sectional perspective. This fact causes diverse education problems, especially at primary level. For this reason, the purpose of this project is to improve Chinese teacher training programmes through a competence-based curriculum. For this purpose, a global teacher competence framework is going to be developed as a baseline to adjust the teaching plans towards a competence-based approach. Besides, teacher trainers will be trained within the competence-based approach so that they can adapt the teaching plans to apply the approach and train other teacher trainers. The development of this project will build capacity in Chinese higher education institutions since they will become qualified within the competence-based approach. Moreover, the project will establish synergies between European and Asia higher education institutions, what will improve the transfer of knowledge and capital.

The LEAD2 project is built on the results of the LEAD project, but with significant new & innovative contributions. The rational for setting up the LEAD2 project is two-fold: 1)need for deeper & broader innovative capacity building on university governance and academic leadership among Chinese and European HEIs, 2)the lack of Knowledge Base and Referencing tool for academic leaders. Therefore, the LEAD2 has four main objectives: 1)customise innovative specialized & targeted blended training for academic leaders, 2)deepen the understanding of university governance and academic leadership (AL) in diverse contexts through comparative studies, 3)create an online Knowledge Base and Referencing Tool for academic leaders, 4)establish an EU-China Center on AL. The key results will include 1) customised blended training (MOOCs & F2F workshop series) targeted for young, middle-level and top-level academic leaders; 2)research reports and publications that significantly contribute to the understanding of university governance and AL in China and the EU; 3)created online Knowledge Base and Quick Referencing tool for (potential) academic leaders; 4)a sustainable EU-China Center on AL. The project will have significant impact in further strengthening the EU-China cooperation in university governance, supporting the modernisation and internationalisation of HEIs and fostering innovative capacities of Chinese and European universities. It will also further contribute to the EU-China High Level People-to-People Dialogue (HPPD), especially the EU-China cooperation in higher education. The key stakeholders include university academic leaders at different levels including potential academic leaders, Chinese and European HEIs, and relevant policy makers.The Consortium is a strong and unique partnership with 6 European and 6 Chinese universities, which ensures a complementarity of expertise and also regional relevance of capacity building in different parts of China & the EU.