Promoting Informed Choices for All Young People Erasmus Project

Project Title

Promoting Informed Choices for All Young People

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 2019

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Access for disadvantaged; Inclusion – equity; Early School Leaving / combating failure in education

Project Summary

CONTEXT AND BACKGROUND

PICAP focuses on how to best support young people as they plan to make the transition from compulsory schooling towards future positive destinations, thereby reducing early school leaving (ESL) across Europe. The project addresses objectives of the ET2020 and the current priorities of Erasmus+.

It is widely acknowledged that early school leaving and failing to opt into other forms of educational provision can have a long term impact. It affects young people’s career prospects, health and wellbeing, and often results in poverty and poor health outcomes in the long term. This is turn can have a detrimental economic impact on countries and negatively impact on social cohesion within and between communities (Honeyball, 2011).

Interventions are needed which support all young people to develop the knowledge and skills essential to participate in and contribute meaningfully to society, both economically and socially. Young people must cultivate the ability to develop an informed understanding of their skills, interests, competences, developmental needs and values and be able to communicate this to others. This understanding can then be utilised to inform decision making about their future career path.

Young people from marginalised groups find this process of developing and communicating their identity more challenging than many of their peers, resulting in increased risk of early school leaving (EC, 2015). This includes those with special educational needs e.g. autism, those from marginalised communities such as migrants, Roma and refugees whose schooling has been interrupted and those from low socio-economic backgrounds.

It is also widely acknowledged that many young people do not come from circumstances which support them to make positive choices from the range of options available to them after they complete compulsory education.

OBJECTIVES

The PICAP strategic partnership aims to reduce early school leaving amongst disadvantages groups by focusing on young people’s identity development. A key innovative intellectual output of the project will be a game which allows young people to learn about skills that are useful in different areas of life, education or work. They will identify the skills they already possess and be encouraged to think about how to attain new skills. The app will allow them to articulate their identity in a way that can be shared with those around, exploring their possible futures in a safe, playful and engaging way.

The project will also provide policy makers, parents and teachers with guides, supplemented by teacher training materials to develop understanding of the process of identity development and how best to support young people at this crucial stage of their lives. To summarise therefore, the objectives of the PICAP project are:

1) To create a range of tools which provide agency and support to young people, particularly those from marginalised communities to make informed choices about positive destinations following compulsory education;

2) To share examples of good support practice in identity development and ESL prevention and how these can be supported effectively with a range of key stakeholders, including teachers and parents;

3) To develop new training materials for teachers so that they can better support young people to make more informed decisions about positive destinations following compulsory education, and provide training to 400 advisors across the partner countries;

4) To provide a transnational policy guide so that this process is supported within the policy context both regionally and transnationally within Europe.

PARTICIPANTS AND METHODOLOGY

A participatory design methodology will be used for all outputs, closely involving the target audiences in the design process. Involvement of stakeholders at all stages of the project is key so that the products are fully informed by all relevant perspectives. During the analysis phase, an online mapping survey will involve 1000 key stakeholders. During the co-design and evaluation phases around 50 young people, 50 parents, 50 teachers and 30 policy makers will participate.

IMPACT

The project will have a high level of impact on a number of levels and on a number of organisations and individuals. Impact on the partner organisations will strengthen their knowledge and understanding of the importance of identity development for young people and how this can feed into informed decision making about future career paths.

LONG TERM BENEFIT

In the long term, the project, through the widespread dissemination of the products created, will contribute to increased employment, greater cohesion in society and economic prosperity despite the rapid changes in the employment market; particularly for groups who would be at heightened risk of not having the educational preparation and qualifications to become valued contributors to the twenty first century workplace and society.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 402552 Eur

Project Coordinator

LEEDS BECKETT UNIVERSITY & Country: UK

Project Partners

• CESIE
• Ahead Partnership Limited
• UNIVERSITETET I TROMSOE – NORGES ARKTISKE UNIVERSITET
• PIN Progresso Infantil
• ZAVOD REPUBLIKE SLOVENIJE ZA SOLSTVO