Preventing Early School Leaving Through Inclusive Strategies Erasmus Project

Project Title

Preventing Early School Leaving Through Inclusive Strategies

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 school education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2014

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Early School Leaving / combating failure in education

Project Summary

In Europe 5.5 million young people quit school before they have completed the upper secondary education. In Romania the rate of early school leaving (ESL) is 18% (2012) and in Turkey it is about 44%, the average rate in the EU is 12.4%. The risk of ESL is especially high for disadvantaged minorities, including Roma. 9% of the Roma in Romania (aged 18-30) complete high school (compared to 41% of other groups). Moreover young people from a migrant background often display a higher than average rate of ESL.
In its conclusions on a strategic framework for European cooperation in education and training (‘ET 2020’) the Council agreed that, by 2020, the share of early leavers from education and training should be less than 10 %. The PEARLS Project – Preventing Early School Leaving Through Inclusive Strategies – contributes to this objective.
An improvement of the situation will be reached by two ways:
1. The project partners will develop a further training for teachers. Teachers will deepen their key competences with regard to handling the diversity among pupils in their classes – in order to commit to the promotion of learning of all students. Units about collaborative teaching, like team teaching will be applied in this context (see Recommendations of the Council, June 2011, 2011/C 191/01).
2. By means of a comprehensive empirical needs analysis at the beginning of the project, it has been explored, which systemic support frameworks need to be implemented in order to reduce the rate of ESL, i.e. mentor programmes, homework clubs, extra-curricular activities to enhance pupil’s self-esteem, parents cafés etc. The objective is, to develop schools into learning environments, viz. external stakeholders (parents, representatives of minorities, enterprises etc.) are being involved into the sphere of school in order to promote the intellectual and emotional development of pupils at risk of ESL. A working group on ESL, which comprised experts nominated by 31 European countries, recommends such measures, since they are considered to be very effective.
The PEARLS further training also entails a module with regard to “school as learning environment”, so that participants can implement basic offers at their schools. They were qualified as multipliers, in this way PEARLS outcomes has a substantial impact in several European regions. Participants successfully took part in the course and they received the EUROPASS certificate (more info on the course: https://www.pearls-erasmus.eu).
The results and activities of the PEARLS project were developed in transnational teams, they were tested, evaluated and some of the modified.

Project partners are:
Elementary schools in Budapest (Hungary), Iasi (Romania) and Edirne (Turkey) and six so called hot spot schools in Berlin, as associative partners. All schools comprise a disproportionate share of pupils who derive from weak socio-economic backgrounds. The Turkish school exclusively has Roma pupils. The Romanian NGO “Gipsy Eye” and the Hungarian Foundation “Artemisszio” have been engaged for years in the field of teacher training, i.e. antidiscriminatory pedagogy.
Applicant is the unit Civic Education of the Leibniz University in Hannover, which educates students to become teachers. It is responsible for the didactic-methodical implementation of the teacher training course. It will be supported by the Humanistic Association Germany. The Teacher Training Agency in Zagreb is responsible for the development of curricula in general education in Croatia, it will ensure, that the PEARLS results will be implemented in national curricula.
The PEARLS project partnership comprises 9 partners from 5 countries.
Results:
– 1 week teacher training course; EUROPASS certificate
– PEARLS toolkit, OER and handbook in five languages; hands-on approaches, topics: children’s rights, diversity in class as a resource
– PEARLS website in six languages (hu, ru, turk, ger, en, cro) – all products as OER
Impact:
Extensive public relation activities, using diverse channels to reach the end-users: teachers, teacher trainees and pedagogues, educational authorities as well as the interested public. Thus the PEARLS results will be available for 10.000s of European teachers. Moreover it is envisaged, through national conferences with policy makers, to insert the PEARLS approaches into national curricula of teacher (further) trainings. As such structural changes will be initiated, more inclusive schools will be established and in the long run the ESL rate will decrease.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 246564,21 Eur

Project Coordinator

GOTTFRIED WILHELM LEIBNIZ UNIVERSITAET HANNOVER & Country: DE

Project Partners

• Humanistischer Verband Deutschlands Landesverband Berlin-Brandenburg
• Asociatia Gipsy Eye
• Mustafa Necati Ilkokulu
• CIFTLIKONU ROMANLARI YARDIMLASMA VE DAYANISMA DERNEGI
• ARTEMISSZIO ALAPITVANY
• AGENCIJA ZA ODGOJ I OBRAZOVANJE
• Scoala Gimnaziala Cozmesti