1st Generation, 2nd Chance: let’s fight school dropout with the family and the community Erasmus Project

Project Title

1st Generation, 2nd Chance: let’s fight school dropout with the family and the community

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for adult education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2019

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Early School Leaving / combating failure in education; Migrants’ issues; Social dialogue

Project Summary

1st & 2nd: First Generation, Second Chance: let’s fight school dropout with the family and the community. A training program for 360 immigrant parents to prevent school absenteeism in their children.
International reports like PISA or TALIS reveal the great social and education challenges within school systems nowadays. The dramatic dropout rate of students in compulsory secondary education and the unequal results of students (depending on their social and economic context) are just two issues tackled in this project. Reducing the dropout rate is also an objective for the European 2020 targets. In Spain, there is 14% school absenteeism; in Italy it is 18.7%. Other objectives included in the ET 2020: to foster social cohesion and equality in communities and improve quality and efficiency in education; to make use of innovative measures to combat demotivation and absenteeism. To achieve that 15% of the adult population will engage in lifelong learning programs (which accept participants from 25 to 64 years old). The target group will be immigrant adults who are parents of primary and secondary students. The Education 2030 document stresses the Education Council’s recommendation of improving the teaching-learning of foreign languages. As for new technologies, this project will include the creation of an e-learning platform for parents on various topics: the host country’s education system, psychological support for teenagers, language assistance for specific terms related to education and translations into Arabic, English and French. The host language classes are aimed at getting a CEFR A2 level, which is necessary for obtaining nationality in most of the counties participating in the project.
The Host Education System component is part of the nationality exam in most of the projects’ participant countries. The primary and secondary schools in the 6 communities of the partner institutions have students from many different nationalities. Some start school very late and, in general, their academic outcomes are not positive. In many cases, learning the host language is a major obstacle in improving their learning process. Moreover, school absenteeism among these students is very high. The aim of this project is to provide primary and secondary schools in multicultural communities with a set of tools to aid the students and their parents to integrate and succeed at school. Integration has to be tackled from various perspectives. The training program for parents would provide language support for parents so that they could help their children with their homework; understand school documents and correspondence; and, for North African immigrants, enable mothers to get out of the house and socialise with women of other nationalities. In both primary and secondary education, parental involvement is very important and has been shown to improve academic results. This project aims at preventing school leaving in the immigrant community and to make parents active participants in the school environment. The parental training program will consist of:
– Language workshops: These will be aimed at newcomer foreign parents and based on the acquisition of the host language. The focus will be on specific subject matter being made accessible to parents, where the necessary school rules are transmitted to follow the schooling of children. Regarding school information, the first content to be passed on to parents should enable them to read and understand school documents (school bulletins , timetables, report cards, assessments), oral or written exchanges with the teachers and others in the school (meetings, appointments with staff ).
-Civics: the knowledge of European values, active citizenship, rights and duties, gender issues and their implementation in society.
– Psychological support: learning strategies; encouraging students to continue studying; conflict prevention and resolution in adolescents; prevention of intra-family violence; sex education; prevention of sexually transmitted diseases and other illnesses related to adolescence, such as bulimia, anorexia, etc.
-Training parents to use the e-learning platform for language courses which will also include other useful information with the contents of the programme.
We must be aware that any social change has an impact on education and that the current educational system in a lot of countries is facing new challenges and new opportunities due to the increase of immigrants coming, especially from Africa. In this sense a lot of European countries, those of the partners in our project, have experienced a lot of social, economic and cultural changes in the last ten years which make the education reality more complex. The uneven or unequal investment in education among European countries makes institutions think about solutions to save this economic unevenness. Society has some social responsibilities too such as the poor involvement of families in the education of children.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 134350 Eur

Project Coordinator

CEPA Son Canals & Country: ES

Project Partners

• Izobrazevalni center Geoss d.o.o.
• Future Focus Ltd
• PANEPISTIMIO THESSALIAS
• UNIVERSITA DEL TEMPO LIBERO SAN FRANCESCO D’ASSISI
• VOLKSHOCHSCHULE SCHROBENHAUSEN EV