LEADING FOR EQUALITY IN A CHANGING EUROPE. 2.1 Europe is changing In many parts of Europe the context in which school leaders must work is changing dramatically: change is both large scale and speedy. Financial insecurity is rising as global economic trends favour Asian and South American nations while much of Europe faces increasing austerity and uncertainty. Resulting youth unemployment is at disquieting levels, particularly in Eastern Europe, and around 50 per cent in Spain and Greece (Eurostat 2012). Migration is increasing rapidly. The proportion of children in school 'who are foreign-born or have foreign-born parents now exceeds 10% in Germany, Belgium, Austria, France, the Netherlands and Sweden, and is above 20% in Switzerland and Luxembourg' (Nusche, 2009, p. 5). These changes are overlaid on the perennial challenges schools face in meeting the needs of children from very diverse socioeconomic and ethnic backgrounds. As Xxxxx (2004, p. 79) states 'the evidence is clear and alarming that various segments of our public school population experience negative and inequitable treatment on a daily basis'. Schools have grappled with achieving equality for along time, but as the issues Europe faces become more testing, so schools are faced with intensifying difficulties in offering an equitable education to all. System level choices, for example about different categories of school, the method of distributing funding and the terms and conditions of teachers' recruitment and employment, are all critical in shaping equality (Nusche, 2009). This chapter, however, does not focus on these system-level factors but on school-level issues; that is, how school leaders can embed equality within their school.
