What kind of systemic and local level solutions can contribute to reducing the rate of early school leavers? How can we identify problems in time to prevent dropping-out? Who is/are responsible for intervention? What kind of good practices exist at national and international levels?

In line with the strategic goals of the European Union the promotion of social inclusion is among the priorities of Tempus Public Foundation.
A prerequisite of creating an equitable society is to prevent dropping out from secondary education and attract those who had left without a qualification back into education. Reducing the rate of early school leavers below 10% is one of the headline targets of the EU2020 strategy.

By facilitating cross-sectoral cooperation and by collecting and promoting systemic as well as practical solutions the expert team of the Knowledge Centre of Tempus Public Foundation is aiming at contributing to the prevention of dropping out from secondary education.
Our thematic sites are equally recommended for policy makers, researchers and practitioners.

 

Cross-sectoral cooperation focused solutions for preventing early school leaving (CroCooS - Prevent-dropout!)

Qualification for All (QALL) (in Hungarian - the English version is coming soon)

Promotion of Social Inclusion through VET (PSIVET) (in Hungarian - the English version is coming soon)

 

 

PREVENTING EARLY SCHOOL DROPOUT

 

Achievements of the CroCooS - Prevent Dropout! Project

 

The international pedagogical experiment coordinated by Tempus Public Foundation involved 5 Hungarian, 5 Slovenian and 5 Serbian vocational schools. In the project, we examined the tools that could best help reduce the high dropout rates among 9 graders, and how the integration of these tools into the everyday life of the school could be supported. We will present some of the findings of the experiments.

 

CroCooS partnership undertook the implementation of an institutional early warning system in the 15 applying vocational schools. The one-and-a-half-year-long on-site work had been preceded by one year of professional preparation, during which the team had to face diverse challenges. Based on international literature, we identified the European countries where such warning system was in use, and we found that these countries were characterised by a collaborative culture among teachers, intersectoral cooperation at a system level, and a generally inclusive, open educational system. However, none of the three experimental countries seem to fully meet these three criteria, which caused various implementational difficulties during the development process. The implementation of the warning system required a paradigm shift and a new approach from the school team and the teachers involved, the interpretation and adoption of which was facilitated by a mentor visiting the school on a monthly basis. At the same time, it was also a great challenge for the project team to design a development programme which could smoothly follow a pre-defined methodology, while being flexible enough by taking into account the local characteristics and needs of the schools. Thus, the mentors’ competence was of key importance in the experiment.

The guide and the set of tools applied in the CroCooS project are available on the project website.

The CroCoos Toolbox is a continuously growing collection of practical solutions aimed at preventing dropout. The tools currently available were tested during the experiment, and their institutional use is recommended after studying the detailed guide.

 The implementation of the project showed great diversity, according to the differences between the individual institutions, but some elements – certainly due to the methodology offered – are typically recurrent in the reports. These are described in detail in the form of case studies, stories and lessons learnt in a multilingual publication. In their reports, the teachers emphasised how their intensive engagement with the students required much more attention, trust-building and responsibility. They also reported that cooperation in an EWS team (a smaller community of teachers assuming an active role in the implementation of the warning system), focusing on a common problem, meant a new and useful approach to work for them. The publication also describes the most useful tools and the methods they developed based on their own ideas. The challenges faced during the work conducted with students threatened by dropout are well illustrated in the personal reports.

 New approaches and methods developed to reduce the rate of dropout:

  • Regard students as the main source of information (helping talks, complex methods to learn more about them, attention and openness, trust-building)
  • Make a personal development plan (uncovering the problem with the involvement of the student concerned, shared undertakings, monitoring and assessing the process)
  • Create personal spaces, friendly rooms in the school building (mentor's room, group room, students' lounge, library, IT room)
  • Involve external partners in the school’s life (parents, assisting professionals)
  • Increase students’ commitment to the school through extracurricular activities (as soon as before the new academic year: ‘0th day’, with joint activities during teaching time, such as gardening or project work)
  • Build a mentoring system for students

A deeper analysis of the experiment and the professional background literature can be found on the quadrilingual project website. Those primarily interested in the school stories can find further details in the publication presenting the project outcomes. www.crocoos.tka.hu

Last modified: 05-12-2017