School Inclusion - Preventing early school leaving

A common challenge for European school systems is the prevention of early school leaving, which according to the most recent research sees almost one student out of five not completing obligatory schooling according to national legislation.

Many studies and initiatives have been and are currently being carried out in the different countries in order to tackle the problem. However these initiatives are not integrated one with another both at national and European level causing a dispersion of information and inefficient allocation of resources.

Moreover teachers are suffering from a lack of skills and competences, and consequently of motivation, in understanding and dealing with pupils at risk of school abandoning. Teachers often are not able to identify with the necessary anticipation the manifesting of the risk factors leading to drop out and to the appropriate initiatives to give effective answers.

The project intends to promote the understanding of the strategies developed to combat early school leaving throughout Europe so as to develop a common strategy to prevent the phenomenon. This common strategy should be based on the best practices identified at European level.

The main target group of the project are teachers of secondary schools, in particular technical and vocational institutes, of the 5 countries participating at the project.

The other main target group is represented by the experts in the field of school policies that will work side by side with the teachers in the research activities and that will be committed to the creation of a e-learning training package, aimed at providing secondary schools teachers the skills to prevent school drop out.

The main project activities are organized in the following work packages:

WP 1 - Collection of Information on Early School Leaving

The specific activities included in this work package are:

• Organization of interviews with public officers in charge of education, headmasters, teachers, students and parents in order to collect specific qualitative and quantitative data on the issue of early school leaving. In order to carry out the interviews the workgroups will use the common format provided.
• National analysis of the situation as far as the issue of early school leaving is concerned. The analysis should make reference to the results of the interviews and to identified publications, studies, researches in the field at national level.

Expected Result: Transnational reports on the early school leaving issues

WP 2 - Creation of Database

The specific activities included in this work package are:

• Collection and review of literature, documents, reports, studies, data, information, etc. on the topic of early school leaving, focusing on socio-demographic factors associated with early school leaving and on intervention strategies and initiatives for preventing early school leaving

Expected Result: Database of documents on the topic of early school leaving

WP 3 - Training Programme Development

On the basis of the recommendations contained in both the national reports and the transnational one, each partner will identify the main contents of a training programme (Syllabus) addressed to the teachers to give them the skills and tools to identify students at risk of dropping out so as to prevent early school leaving.

Expected Result: Training programme adoption

WP 4 - Creation of Training Package Contents

Each partner develops the contents for the training package following the programme defined in WP3. The aim of the training package is to help teachers to identify the students at risk of school dropping out and to provide them with the skills to prevent early school leaving.

Expected Result: On-line availability training package

WP 5 - Test of the Training Package

The training course created in WP 4 is to be tested on a pilot group of teachers in the partner countries involved.

Expected Result: Availability on-line of the final validated version of the e-learning based training package developed in the context of the project