We were invited to participate at the CONNECT International Conference on Open Schooling #CICOS2023 in Madrid on 6-7 July 2023 in Barcelona. The reason for the invitation was that we were asked to talk about the role of parents and families in open schooling, but we also presented the recently ended PHERECLOS project, especially its unique advocacy deliverables. At the end of the event we were surprised by the organisers. We have received an Award of Excellence for our contribution to open schooling in Europe that we proudly accepted.

The impressive building of the Catalan capital’s impressive science museum Museu de la Ciència CosmoCaixa offered an inspiring venue for this scientific conference that was aiming to

• reflect and spread open schooling practices
• support overcoming barriers with drivers that enhance the quality of education through open schooling
• explore opportunities for open schooling to contribute to the sustainable development goals
• enhance the sustainability and consolidate the open schooling movement in education at local and global levels, through active cross-projects collaboration.

The Award of Excellence is a welcome recognition of our work on quality, inclisive education, related teacher and school leader training and especially the role and potential of parental engagement and child participation in decision making and implementation.

In our presentation, we have focused on the variety of learning outcomes in open schooling, including social-emotional learning, active citizenship and well.being, the need to move away from projects towards sustained programmes, the need to balance STE(A)M and Humanities, and the starting point of all this: the right of each child to the best education they need.