Early school leaving causes an increasing level of concern in many countries. Denmark, Finland, Germany, the Netherlands, Iceland and Norway all has well-financed, well-approved and well-structured upper secondary school systems. All the same, the proportion of students not completing their upper secondary education is worringly high in all these countries. Early school leaving is known to be linked to a series of social variables, such as family income and parental educational level. However, a rising attention is given to what the schools can do in order to increase the proportion of students graduating on time. Formal education is increasingly important in all fields to get work, and this is even more important when the job marked is tightening. In this project, six similar schools will cooperate to counteract early school leaving. These are combined upper secondary schools, all offering both general studies and VET. They have a comparable size, and the offer many of the same lines of study. All have made great efforts in reducing the early school leaving problem. Together, they have experienced many successful measures to make students complete their education. The next step is to compare these measures, share good practise and test methods that have proven successful in other, comparable schools. The partner schools all have an extensive collaboration with local working life. Workplacements and other forms for cooperation between school and working life plays a central role in motivating young people to finish their education. We will compare our relationships to working life, and bring forward good ideas as to how improve this cooperation. Statistics regarding school completion is a main focus in the project. We will measure results of implemented measures on statistics on school completion. The schools use different statistical tools to survey the students' educational careers, and we will seek good practises on how to use and interpret these statistics. Dissemination plays a central role in the project. Although these schools have a similar structure and easily can exchange ideas, we believe that well-working ideas from these schools will also prove efficient in other upper secondary schools. We also aspire to bring forward new ideas to county authorities, higher education and policy makers. The schools will spread the ideas of measures counteracting early school leaving in their local networks, in their counties, and at regional, national and international levels. One of the partner schools is a member of the EFVET network. This will be a central network for dissemination. We believe that through international cooperation by similar schools, and by collaboration with workplaces and universities, we will be able to reduce the proportion of school dropouts in the involved schools and create a base of good practice towards reduction in early school leavers across regional and national borders.
Early school leaving causes an increasing level of concern in many countries. Denmark, Finland, Germany, the Netherlands, Iceland and Norway all have well-financed, well-approved and well-structured upper secondary school systems. The proportion of students not completing their upper secondary education is worryingly high in all these countries. Early school leaving is known to be linked to a series of social variables, such as family income, parental educational level and grade of parental/friends support of the importance of learning and performing. The European labour markets are in great need of skilled workers and these needs are supposed to grow in the future. The future creation of values in Europe and our common welfare is dependent on the provision of skilled workers. More young people have to choose vocational studies, they have to perform on a higher stage and complete their education at school. A rising attention is given to what the schools can do in order to increase the proportion of students graduating on time. Formal education is increasingly important to get work, and this is even more important when the job marked is tightening and getting more global. In this project, six similar schools have cooperated to counteract early school leaving. The partners in the CSE-project are combined upper secondary schools, offering both general studies and VET. They are all of a comparable size, and offer many of the same lines of study. The partners in The Erasmus+ Completing Secondary Education project have been Charlottenlund Upper Secondary School in Trondheim (Norway), Verkmenntaskolin in Akureyri (Iceland), Techcollege in Aalborg (Denmark), Axxell Utbildning (Finland), ROC Noorderpoort in Groningen (Holland) and Richard Riemerschmid Berufskolleg in Cologne (Germany).The CSE-partners have made great efforts in reducing the early school- leaving problem, and have valuable experiences and successful measures to increase school completion on vocational studies. We have compared our efforts and measures, shared our practice to find “best practices”, made observations through job shadowing and tested and implemented good ideas and tools into daily praxis at our own learning institutions and communities. Due to cooperation with research environments in learning and behaviour, we can say that our results are developed on research-based knowledge. The partner schools have extensive collaboration with local working life, but practice different models from work based learning that have evolved over a long period of history, the dual model (Germany) and school based learning. We found that work placements and other forms of cooperation between school and working life play a central role in motivating young people to complete.This contact has to be established as early as possible to make the learning relevant and motivating. Through comparing our relationships to working life, visits, workshops and job shadowing, we detected the need to find methods to strengthen the links between theory and practice in general subjects as well as in vocational programmes. Other important factors were the learning environment and the teachers role as teacher, guide and support and the challenge of professional language. If the student do not understand what the teachers are talking about, he or she is likely to quit. We gained a lot of useful knowledge on the statistical methods and models. In view of this new insight we decided – in dialogue with the Norwegian national agency – to focus on disseminating information about the Norwegian and Dutch systems of drop-out and completion statistics as a source of inspiration for the other project partners in their continuous improvement of their practices in this field. The fact that the partner countries use different national statistics, and they are difficult to compare is not something that can be changes at school level within the framework of a project like this. Therefore, we decided to use the statistical tools as they are, and focus on the type of comparisons that they actually do enable us to make. Dissemination has played a central role in the project. We believe that well-working ideas from the CSE-project will prove efficient in other upper secondary schools locally and regionally, as well as on a national and international level. We have brought new ideas to county authorities, higher education and policy makers as well as to partners and leaders in working life. The findings, knowledge and results of the project counteracting early school leaving are spread to the partners’ networks, local networks, in our counties, and at regional, national and international levels as The EFVET network The results of the CSE-project and the working methods used in the project to extract best practice have increased the partners’ motivation and ability to find and adapt tools to counteract early school leaving in vocational education and training.