Although measures to prevent early school leaving exist in most European countries, the percentage of young people leaving school prematurely remains above 10% in 2015. After experiencing the transfer of good practices and a methodology to fight early leaving school to a European level, we found out that drop-out interventions often tend to focus on the school context and the students themselves, whereas parental, environmental and social actions play such an important role in this process. The previous ATOMS project pointed out that family factors were not sufficiently taken into account in accompanying dropouts. Therefore, it seemed more than relevant to the consortium of partners (Italy, Spain and Belgium) in logic of continuity, to propose the ATOMS & CO project and this, in order to develop and implement a system of school attachment focused on the inclusion of families. The transnational partnership aims to: - Define the needs of families and actors in the field by drawing up an inventory, - Promote synergies between families, schools and social workers (help for young people, public services, etc.) in order to reduce the risk of early leaving school and / or improve their success, - Improve dialogue with families by making the meaning and challenges of schooling and the functioning of the school system more comprehensible and reachable, - Develop a transnational scheme corresponding to identified needs, test and adapt it, - To equip the actors on the ground in order to take into account the family factors in the accompaniment of dropout students. Through this project, we want to target families (with particular attention to families at risk of dropping out) of pupils aged from 6 to 18 years. The intellectual productions undertaken by the consortium are to: - O1 Realize a state of the art - O2 Develop a school-based system that focuses on the inclusion of families, - O3 Device learning phase, - O4 Test and adapt the device, - O5 Disseminate and exploit the results.
Although school hanging measures exist in most European countries, the percentage of early school leavers remains a concern. This is why six partners (FISSAAJ, CEC, Trinijove, Escoles Parroquials, University of Bologna and Gio.net) from three European countries (Belgium, Spain and Italy) have decided to continue their efforts on this theme by launching the Atoms&co project. On the basis of the conclusions of the previous Atoms project (2013-2015), which highlighted the opportunity and importance of working on the family factors linked to early school leaving, the partners decided to focus on this area of work by developing a school hanging device centred on the link between families, schools and social assistance actors. The objective of this device is to create an alliance between the actors, in order to reduce the risks of young people dropping out. To achieve the device, the partnership relied on a transnational ‘State of the art’ which took the form of a transnational report (Output 1). It had for objective to take stock of the different educational situations and characteristics of each national context, to define the factors favourable to the construction of educational alliances and also to identify the needs of field actors and families. This report was developed in close collaboration with local realities through questionnaires and different data collection methods (focus group, world café). On the basis of this transnational report, and a series of best practices collected in the different countries, a device has been developed (Output 2). It is based mainly on the involvement and participation of stakeholders in the process, and is intended to be flexible and adaptable to different educational, societal and national contexts. After developing the device, it was important to disseminate it but also to implement it in concrete situations. This is why the third output of our project took the form of a learning activity, which aimed to train people to the device and make them actors of the device. This "training of trainers" took place in December 2018 and brought together more than thirty participants with multiple profiles (social workers, educators, psychologists, teachers, etc.) from the three countries of the partnership. Following this training, and in parallel with the implementation of the device, the trainers organised training sessions with the support of the project partners in order to disseminate the device within their local reality. This step was the opportunity to set up the testing phase of our project (output 4), in order to test and adapt the system according to the feedback received. These different outputs were all carried out in conjunction with the dissemination activities of our project (output 5), in order to raise awareness among the widest audience possible throughout the project's progress. These dissemination activities include the creation of a website (http://atomsandco.eu/) to make accessible the productions of the project; the distribution of 6 newsletters, participation in a seminar in Sicily to present the project, the dissemination of the project's progress via the partners' websites and social networks and the organisation of two European seminars (Bologna and Brussels) in the presence of representatives of public authorities, professionals from the field but also families. In terms of impact and results, the project has made it possible: - to achieve the various outputs, and in particular the construction and testing of a device for the inclusion of families within local contexts; - to collect 26 tools and best practices that have been integrated into the device; - to involve 44 institutions as beneficiaries of the project; - to train 101 professionals to the device (including 32 during the general training in December 2018); - to involve 81 professionals in the implementation of the device; - to reach 436 families through the project activities; - to strengthen or create local networks to bring together professionals working to prevent early school leaving.