The Hungarian Eco-School network was established in 2000 with 40 pilot schools and has continuously been increasing since then. At present the network has almost 900 members, approximately the quarter of all Hungarian primary, secondary and vocational schools. Schools could join the network on a voluntary basis by applying for the Eco-School title. Call for application is issued by the ministry responsible for education and the ministry responsible for environmental issues each year. The application is based on a self-evaluation procedure. (OFI 2010). For applying successfully schools have to prove their effort in the field of educational and sustainable development by reaching a minimum of 8 points in the areas of school life (basic documents, organizational conditions, pedagogical work, operation of the school, communication, co-operations, local community, specialties of the school). This whole school approach of the Hungarian system is based on the eco-school approach of the ENSI network (Széplaki and Varga 2005). In order to follow the work of Eco-schools, to gain information about their developments and the obstacles they encounter a two level monitoring system is operated. As the first level of the system each year an on-line questionnaire is sent out to all the schools having the title. Data collected by questionnaires are used to evaluate the work of the network in several ways. There are topic oriented researches such as Saly at al 2014 about community-school co-operation, and researches focusing on eco-schools in certain geographical areas within Hungary (Varga at al 2010). As the second level of the system on-situ visits, document analysis and interviews are executed on a more limited sample of 10 schools per year having the title for at least for six years. These visits serve two goals: first to develop a deep insight into the work of the most successful eco-schools, second to make diagnoses for the schools which have serious problems according to their questionnaire data. Based on these diagnoses the schools receive professional help to overcome their problems. The presentation will summarize the data collected by the 2016 monitoring questionnaires (n=869) and on-situ visits (n=10) focusing on the data available about the leadership of the eco-schools with conclusions made on the characteristics of school leadership which make an eco-school excellent or help to solve the problems of the school. Distributed leadership and sophisticated opportunities for professional communication within the school are discussed as key success factors for effective eco-school management.

OFI 2010: System of Eco-school title, published by the Hungarian Institute for Educational Research and Development, 2010: http://ofi.hu/system-ecoschool-title (2016. 01.09) Széplaki, N. & Varga A (2005): National reports on eco-school initiatives –Hungary In: Mayer, M. & Mogensen, F. (eds). : ECO-schools: trends and divergencies, Austrian Federal Ministry of Education Science and Culture 2005, Vienna, Austria 233-254 Saly, E.; Néder, K.; Varga, A.& Könczey, R. Collaboration between schools and communities in Hungary, Poster presented at: Designing a Sustainable Future through School Community Collaboration Final Conference of the Comenius Lifelong Learning Network CoDeS Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain, May 21-23rd, 2014 Varga, P., Horváth, D., Varga, A., Gálfi, M., & K. Németh, M.: Az „Ökoiskola Hálózat” alakulása a Nyugat-dunántúli Régióban Helyzetkép és lehetőségek a Hálózatban (Trends in the Eco-School Network in the Western Transdanubia Region - State of Art and possibilities in the Network) paper presented at the „ Nyugat-Dunántúl környezeti állapota, Helyzetkép és kihívások – (Environmental situation of Western Transdanubia Region - State of arts and challenges) International Conference, Szombathely Hungary 10-12. nov. 2010.