Early school leaving (ESL) is an obstacle to the socio-economic growth of the European countries. One of the targets for the EU in 2020, related to education, is to reduce the rates of ESL below 10%. Tackling early school leaving is a stepping stone towards improving the opportunities of young people and for supporting smart, sustainable and inclusive growth. Young people with a migration background are at great risk of ESL from school. To this extent, the gap between natives and young people born abroad is still very high. One of the factors leading to ESL is the lack of prevention and early intervention strategies, both at institutional and school levels, related to the need to develop effective methodologies and support for these students.The objective of E-EVALINTO is twofold. On the one hand, it is intended to promote peer mentoring actions addressed to both reduce early school leaving in migrant students population (secondary school) and to acknowledge the value of interculturality itself as part of an active and responsible European citizenship education. On the other hand, E-EVALINTO is aimed to develop an ICT framework for assessing, managing and developing activities for intercultural contexts, with particular focus to taking decision processes and the identification of different patterns that may be induced from the variety of potential situations to be analysed.E-EVALINTO main target groups are:- Teachers and other school staff (counsellors, headmasters, etc.)- Students (secondary school level), particularly those with migrant background at risk of academic failure and ESL- Other stakeholders and policy-makersTo succeed in these objectives, E-EVALINTO will carry out these types of activities:a. Development of an intercultural framework for peer mentoring actions, by means of:- the analysis of schools "intercultural profile";- the identification of migrant students potentially at risk (competencies assessment) to become mentees;- the identification of potential mentors (peer students) and teachers' intercultural skills;b. Development of an educational portal, that will include:- ICT tools to develop peer mentoring activity plans to be implemented and monitored by teachers;- ICT tools to evaluate the impact of peer mentoring actions to promote intercultural values and improve migrant learning skills and integration;- ICT tools to identify "intercultural school patterns" addressed to learn lessons and take decisions.c. Design and implementation of training actions for teachers (face-to face, online and self-learning)The development of these activities will imply, from a methodological approach, the need to pilot the whole project (technical issues and academic experiences) through peer mentoring experiences at school, firstly at a small and controlled scale and finally open at potentially large scale. A group of researchers and technicians from partner institutions will monitor these experiences and will be responsible for the development and improvement of the ICT environment for enhancing the potential of both activity development and assessing the results obtained and so taking decisions with regard to the impact of peer mentoring actions. Expected results are closely related to the activities planned, particularly the development of training actions addressed to teachers, the availability of an educational portal for monitoring all the project stages (from the analysis of schools’ intercultural profile to decision making processes) and, as a consequence, it is expected to reduce significantly (20% expected) the rates of ESL in students with migrant background during the project lifecycle in the schools analysed, so offering a framework to approach intercultural issues at school from a holistic point of view. This framework and the related intercultural patterns will be based on the analysis of a very significant amount of data through learning analytics techniques as to identify potential good practices and to provide support to take decisions, both at academic and policy level.The very nature of the project has been planned to continue providing long term results. The ICT environment and their tools, based on open source solutions, will be openly available for being used, downloaded and distributed during and after the project lifecycle. The framework and intercultural patterns identified will let future users to benefit from the results of E-EVALINTO project. Finally, structured training course for teachers will be offered after the end of the project, in order to increase the size of the network of schools and institutions involved during the project, while the ICT environment and network is expected to keep growing by joining new schools and educational practitioners.
Tackling early school leaving is a stepping stone towards improving the opportunities of young people and for supporting smart, sustainable and inclusive growth. Young people with a migration background are at great risk of ESL from school. To this extent, the gap between natives and young people born abroad is still very high. One of the factors is the lack of prevention and early intervention strategies, both at institutional and school levels, related to the need to develop effective methodologies and support for these students. The objective of E-EVALINTO was twofold. On the one hand, it was intended to promote peer mentoring actions addressed to both reduce early school leaving in migrant student population (secondary school) and to acknowledge the value of interculturality itself as part of an active and responsible European citizenship education. On the other hand, E-EVALINTO was aimed to develop an ICT framework for assessing, managing and developing activities for intercultural contexts. The partnership consists of six organisations including four Higher Education Institutions, a NGO and a Research, Development and Education Centre: University of Salamanca (ES); University of Cádiz (ES); Społeczna Akademia Nauk (PL); Dublin City University (IE); Oxfam Italia (IT) y Cardet (CY). It is a lean consortium made up of institutions well experienced in the intercultural area and well-balanced in terms of competences and experiences regarding Research, Methodology, ICT and Innovation and Teacher and Practitioners Training. The E-EVALINTO team has been supported by 16 pilot schools, located in the partner countries, all secondary schools with different percentage of migrant students and different gap between natives and migrants. To succeed in these objectives, E-EVALINTO carried out the following activities: E-EVALINTO Framework: design of the theoretical and methodological framework for implementing peer mentoring actions and for evaluating the situation of a school with regard to interculturality, identifying migrant students potentially at risk, peers to act as mentors and teachers' intercultural skills. E-EVALINTO Environment: development of an educational portal, which offers to schools and teachers a complete set of tools and activities to manage and evaluate the implementation of the intercultural mentoring programme with their students. E-EVALINTO Training Programme Design: to equip teachers with tools to deal with diversity and to apply them at school in order to work effectively with pupils at risk, a training programme for teachers has been designed and implemented both in face to face and online modality. The results achieved are closely related to the activities planned, particularly the development of training actions addressed to teachers, the implementation of peer mentoring actions with students and the availability of an educational portal at disposal of schools and teachers where to develop and monitor all the intercultural mentoring programme stages (from the analysis of schools’ intercultural profile to decision making processes), so offering a framework to approach intercultural issues at school from a holistic point of view. As regards the impact, we can affirm that the E-EVALINTO project strengthened the profile of teaching professions by introducing in classroom innovative intercultural strategies, that allowed teachers to access or create by themselves tools and materials for their daily teaching practices and the climate of inclusion and confidence among students at school, by enhancing the development of inter-relational competences and reducing also the stereotypes concerning languages and cultural diversity. The very nature of the project has been planned to continue providing long term results. The ICT environment and their tools, based on open source solutions, are openly available for being used, downloaded and distributed and the E-EVALINTO network is expected to keep growing by joining new schools and educational practitioners. The training course for teachers is available in self-learning modality on the E-EVALINTO virtual campus but, attending the requests of teachers not so technologically skilled, structured training course for teachers will be offered after the end of the project (face to face or in blended modality) in the partner organizations, in order to increase the size of the network of schools and institutions involved during the project. The methological framework (intercultural patterns, templates for activities, evaluation tools, guidelines and tutorials) let future users to benefit from the results of E-EVALINTO project.