All Aboard Erasmus Project

Project Title

All Aboard

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 2015

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; Early School Leaving / combating failure in education

Project Summary

The nature of this project stems from the educational deficits observed in our societies, which in turn have been pointed out by different governing bodies across Europe. European contemporary societies have for the past years been challenged by an economic crisis that has contributed to austerity measures being put into place to counterbalance financial deficits. The fields of education are by no means an exception and educational systems around Europe are today being challenged by migratory fluxes, increasing numbers of pupils that do not cope with formal educational demands and eventually become early school leavers.

The “All Aboard” project is to be seen in the light of these alarming rates of early school leavers across Europe and on the need to creating a space for discussion and cooperation at EU level, particularly within the Erasmus+ programme on matters referring to ESL. Research, dissemination and development are the core issues that guide this project. They refer to creating challenging educational environments and innovative methodological or pedagogical strategies that are consistent with both local circumstances and the globalization of our communities.

To tackle ESL we need therefore to understand the causes behind early school leaving, remove obstacles within the educational systems that prevent the youth from completing upper secondary education, encourage schools to develop supportive learning and environments, promote multi-professional teams and increase their continuous training. We also need to adapt educational guidance and vocational counseling to pupils’ and societal needs, support cooperation between schools and local communities and involve relevant stakeholders.

The added value of this project is that we do not only do research on ESL, but we guide all the process in the schools, from prevention, early detection, case studies and results analysis to the implementation of new methodologies derived from the outcomes resulting from the work in this project.

The preventive perspective that we want to implement is one of the outstanding points of our approach. We believe that fighting ESL needs adopting early detection ESL strategies, implementing preventive dropout programmes, fostering the improvement of the emotional climate in the classroom, and/or integrating the development of skills in the curriculum, which are key pillars of our approach to cope with ESL.

Our ultimate objective is to reduce the number of early school leavers. The basis of our project is to look into the causes of ESL in our contexts and to provide detecting tools, guidance and training to the persons in direct contact with students (teachers, guidance providers, educators, management teams, etc.) and who can detect at an early stage possible cases of school dropouts.

The 4 participating organizations are involved in supporting other educational institutions in their own contexts, be it as teacher training providers or as organizations responsible for the general education in their municipalities. The nature of the partners involved in this project will guarantee a multiplying effect and transmission of results among the schooling contexts and among our communities. The participating organisations’ daily contact with schools assure that the benefits will reach the target groups mostly involved with ESL: mainly students and teachers.

The 3 main tangible results of this project have been the development of 3 intellectual outputs: the Detection Model Tool (IO-1), the Best Practices Guide (IO-2) and the Online Course (IO-3).
Amont the intangible results and impact, we have:
–Better understanding of the process students follow before dropping out from school.
–Identification of the critical elements in our contexts that determine possible cases of ESL.
–Promotion of problem-solving strategies among students, school staff and families.
–Improvement of the skills and professional qualification of the persons paticipating in the project.
–Consolidation of our organizations to tackle not only the problem of dropping out from the schools, but also to cope with other daily
problems in our schools: absentiism, violence, integration, special education needs, etc.
–Strengthening of our organizations as ones capable to take part in other national or international projects.
–Better knowledge and experience gained on how to use emotional intelligence and other strategies to prevent ESL.
–Increased capacity to provide support to other insctitutions in cases of ESL.
–Increased awareness on the importance of treating possible cases at risk of ESL at the early stages.

The line of work adopted by this partnership is of recent appearance and it is likely to gain acceptance in the coming years. It can open a new collaborative line of work with other institutions or with policy makers. In this sense it is due to become a sustainable line of work that surpasses the expectations set in this project.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 145107,62 Eur

Project Coordinator

CENTRO DE FORMACION E RECURSOS DE A CORUÑA & Country: ES

Project Partners

• Norrköpings Kommun
• Blickpunkt Identität
• STADTSCHULRAT FUR WIEN