The countries in the project (EE,HR,MK,SI) face numerous economic and social challenges caused by transitions from socialists systems and by the long term economic recession. The situation regarding the number of people living at risk of poverty or social exclusion is particularly grave as current data show they have high percentages of population in this group (EUROSTAT 2015 data EE 24,2%, HR 29,1%, SI 19,2%; WB 2014 data ( poverty rate) MK 22,1%). Poverty and social exclusion harm individuals and limit their opportunities to achieve full potential by affecting their wellbeing and lowering educational outcomes. This situation has heavy implications for both education systems and schools. The project will focus on support to schools to tackle disadvantaged learners from low socio economic background, living in poverty or at risk of poverty by designing innovative school policies and practices. The overall objective of BRAVEdu proposal is to strengthen the capacity of schools to support disadvantage learners from low socio economic background, living in poverty or at risk of poverty in active participation in school life and in achieving better learning outcomes. This will be done through all activities in the project here briefly presented: - examining the factors for success in Estonia their policies and practices both at national and school level - designing innovative school policies and practices to support disadvantage learners from low socio economic background, living in poverty or at risk of poverty. - raising awerness on the issues through all of the participative actvities in the project, multiplier event and through dissemination of project results and outputs. Through the project activities the direct target of the activities are: Teachers: the incubator of innovative practices as well as the exploratory study will contribute to empowering teachers to recognize and address the issue of poverty providing them innovative practices and policies as well as peer-learning possibilities. Teacher training providers: intellectual outputs of the projects will be disseminated reaching teacher trainers from all over Europe raising their awareness about the issue of poverty in education, they will also be able to use part of the project publications to enrich existing teacher trainings programs. Students with lower SES background: teachers that will participate in the project will implement supporting mechanisms for students with lower SES background improving the quality of their participation in school life. Project activities: • O1: Analytical Report on Estonian success • O2: Innovative school policies and practices handbook - Breaking the taboo - creative steps for dealing with poverty in education • E1: Can society afford to be poverty blind? • C1: Study visit in Estonia • C2: Innovative school policies and practices Incubator • 4 transnational meetings Results: • Strong and resilient partnership of organisations from different fields (schools, research, think tanks and CSO's involved in school development) implementing actions to mitigate the effects of poverty in education • Increasing professional capital of the participating organisations and their staff through the learning process that will happen between different types of organisation will increase professional capacities for exploring and combating the issue. • Raising awareness of issues of poverty and education to the public at large through media and social media presence. • Raising awareness of issues of poverty and offering practice on how to combat its effect in education to schools in particular. Handbook on innovative school policies and practices on the topic will be available to all schools in the participating countries in the national languages on the project WEB and webpages of partners. • The 3 schools directly involved in the project will also share them with their partner schools in and out of countries and in their school communities. • Partner organisations with developed teachers training programs will enrich them including the issues of poverty and low achievement through raising awareness of attitudes and beliefs of teachers and possibilities for practice to overcome it. • The project results will be shared within the NEPC network and at NEPC Summer School in 2018 that will focus on the issue of poverty in education. Moreover, NEPC will also share the project results among the School and policy net (49 schools in SEE) established in the project Regional Support for Inclusive Education. • The project results will also be shared within SIRIUS Policy Network on Migrant Education with members in 18 EU countires and in NEPC, PRAXIS, ERI and FFE are members of. • NEPC will disseminate and share the project results through the NEPC members in 20 countries and its existing partnerships with SIRIUS Policy Network on Migrant Education, UNESCO NGO platform and NORRAG.
Project’s activities were designed to provide data and solutions to different stakeholders in education on ways of addressing the negative implications of students' long-term exposure to poverty. Project resorted to PISA 2015 results, which confirmed students’ SES has a significant bearing on their performance, and that students from low-SES households are more likely to be low achievers. As Estonia is preforming especially well when it comes to percentage of low achievers - lowest in Europe, at 8.8%, but whose general poverty rate is comparable to other project countries, it was chosen to have its policies analysed (O1). Finally, significant for this project is conducted research which confirmed that attitudes and beliefs of teachers have direct effect on students' achievement and can support them independently of students’ SES, and that is why the second intellectual output of the project (O2) was to produce a handbook for schools and teachers on creating ideas for mitigating the effects of poverty in the form of school-based activities. The overall objective was to strengthen the capacity of schools to better support disadvantage learners in active participation in school life and in achieving better learning outcomes through: a) exploring and analysing policies and practices implemented in Estonia that enabled it to severely reduce the effect of low SES on student achievement, and drawing lessons from it; b) designing innovative school policies and practices through participative approach involving teachers, CSOs, schools, and researchers, and disseminating these. Project activities directly targeted: • Teachers: the incubator of innovative practices (C2) gathered teachers and school staff to work on tackling poverty in education and provided them with innovative practices and awareness about policies, as well as peer-learning possibilities that exist in their professional field. • Teacher-training providers: intellectual outputs of the projects were among other target groups disseminated among teacher trainers • Students with lower SES: teachers that participated in the project learnt about and as a result are better equipped to support students with lower SES. Number and type/profile of participants (for more details please see unedr 3.1) - 130 relevant stakeholders from at least 17 EU, and all together 30 countries, were present at the multiplier event (E1), including teachers and school staff, as well as representatives of partner organisations. - The peer review study trip to Estonia (C1) gathered 16 participants from partner organizations; as well as local EE researchers, teachers and school staff (50). - The Innovative practices incubator /summer school (C2) gathered 34 representatives of schools, teachers and school staff, from project countries and beyond, that contributed with their knowledge to the creation of O2. - For the consultative national events (A9), partners harvested from a pool of schools and teachers that were not involved in the project, and who were targeted as either experts on the topic (CSO representatives; public offices representatives), or those who would benefit most from learning about, using, and further disseminating intellectual results that national events promoted. 91 people participated in total (in all 3 partner countries). Description of undertaken activities: - Three-day peer study visit to Estonia, hosted by the Estonian partner, with 2 representatives of each project partner (C1) correlated to the production of O1, which explored and analysed policies and practices implemented in Estonia directly or indirectly reducing the effect of low SES on student achievement, and which is published online in English. - The “Innovative school policies and practices incubator” (C2) was organized in the form of summer school and gathered more than 30 participants who worked to develop and frame innovative school policies and practices aiming at reducing the effects of poverty on students' achievement and educational experiences. This Incubator resulted in the creation and final production of the “Innovative school policies and practices handbook - Breaking the taboo - creative steps for dealing with poverty in education” (O2), published in English, Croatian, Slovenian, Macedonian and Albanian, disseminated through NEPC network and partners’ networks’ websites - Multiplier event (E1) gathered 130 participants, and besides two representatives from each project partner, included 30 teachers and school staff, and more than 70 relevant international education stakeholders, from at least 17 other EU countries. - Three consultative events (A9) (Croatia, Slovenia, North Macedonia) to present the Handbook Results: increased professional capital of the participating organisations and their staff through learning process to deal with the consequences of poverty in education.