Drop Out – Coaching at School Erasmus Project

Project Title

Drop Out – Coaching at School

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 Schools Only

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2016

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Intercultural/intergenerational education and (lifelong)learning; Early School Leaving / combating failure in education; ICT – new technologies – digital competences

Project Summary

DROP OUT – COACHING AT SCHOOL This project addressed to two problematic issues at schools and in the long term in the society. The first one was students could not identify their needs and abilities well enough to plan their career. And the second one, the students found it hard to cope with the pressure and stress of the vague future, as a result they would leave school earlier. Most of the students belonged to different social classes which meant some of them were at highly risk of drop-out. Every partner school had evaluated the percentage of these students: Italy: 20%, Estonia: 2%, Poland: 7%, Romania: 15%, Turkey: 23%, Spain: 20% and Greece: 15%. The schools had used surveys, school reports of social backgrounds of the local communities or other available materials from their Educational Departments. Referring to our main aim which was reducing the number of students at risk of drop out we wanted to achieve the following states: Italy: 10%, Estonia: 0%, Poland: 0%, Romania: 10%, Turkey: 10%, Spain: 10% and Greece: 10%. The second aim we wanted to achieve was reducing stress level and developing the necessary abilities to manage emotions as well as overcoming anxiety within the classroom. The other goal was improving creativity in using new ICT technologies by working with robotics experts. The next aim to gain was providing the motivation of students for learning and socializing by showing them how to plan their future career. There were 7 schools participating in the project: Poland as a coordinator, Turkey, Italy, Romania, Spain, Estonia and Greece. The initiators of the project had been schools from Turkey and Italy as their countries struggled with the problem of early school leaving to a large extent. The Polish school had agreed to be the coordinator with regard for its experience. The main methodology how to cope with the issue of early school leaving was creating a system of coaches in every participant school and working with students at risk. According to the expertise and competences of the project team, the distribution of tasks were as below:
1. Turkey, January 2017 – Seminar on life coaching for teachers; questionnaire about the level of stress and the EFT Technique; edition of a guide ‘Drop out – Coaching at School. How to reduce the risk of early school leaving?’
2. Greece, March 2017 – Interviews with professionals to assess the pros and cons of different careers as well as workshop: ‘How to behave at a job interview?’; editing a calendar for 2018 with photos and students’ stories titled: ‘I have a dream…’.
3. Italy, November 2017 – Exhibition on Robotics: Open Fair – the students assembled Lego- bricks in order to build a Robot; leading a project blog with all the news and students’ experience.
4. Estonia, April/May 2018 – Outdoor sports and Yoga to gain inner peace; creating booklet titled: ‘How can Yoga and outdoor sports help us?’ with the essential techniques. Other partners’ tasks were as follows:- Romania: designing the mouse-pads, pens, T-shirts, caps with the logo; monitoring of achievements and evaluation of results; editing a start-up brochure: ‘Drop out – Coaching at School’ about partner schools and our aims to promote Erasmus+ Program during the following 2 years,- Spain: editing of an album with the photos and summaries of all the Training Activities, titled: ‘Erasmus Friends’; a leader of works on preparing a perfect CV, – Poland: arranging and updating the project web page; editing a part of the guide (‘Drop out- Coaching at School. How to reduce the risk of early school leaving?’) titled ‘Methodology of Learning by Doing’; preparing Europasses for all participants. During the total duration of 24 months, 3 transnational meetings were held:
1. In Spain, in November 2016 to talk about the activities’ details and project management.
2. In Romania, in May 2017 to monitor the aims of the project and evaluate the results achieved within the first year.
3. In Poland, in July 2018 to assess the outcomes of the whole project using prepared materials in Romania. All participants were trained by a professional expert how to share the elaborated materials.
At the end of the project, according to the main results, the teachers did:
– become coaches (100% of the teachers in every school were trained) working with students at risk of drop out,
– create a new system at schools to prevent early school leaving by having life coaches at schools.
All the students at risk of drop out did:
– succeed in planning their future career by continuing their education at school,
– improve their ICT and foreign language skills through the computer programming of a Robot,
– learn to cope with negative feelings and turn them into positive ones to see advantages of staying at school,
– keep in mind that mistakes lead to better learning and the most important thing is not to give up. All participants were actively involved towards a better understanding of the real European dimension.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 144035 Eur

Project Coordinator

Szkola Podstawowa nr 2 im. Jaroslawa Dabrowskiego w Olsztynie & Country: PL

Project Partners

• Colegiul National de Informatica Grigore Moisil
• Kanepi Gümnaasium
• IIS Petrucci Ferraris Maresca
• Institut Guillem Catà
• 2o GENIKO LYKEIO NEAS IONIAS MAGNISIAS
• Suleyman Demirel Anadolu Lisesi