Early School Leaving is an obstacle to economic growth and employment for EU Countries. It hampers productivity and competitiveness, and fuels poverty and social exclusion. With its shrinking workforce, Europe has to make full use of its human resources. Young people who leave education and training prematurely are bound to lack skills and qualifications, and to face serious, persistent problems on the labour market. It aims to inspire and generate the development of a comprehensive approach to ESL. The project proposal is based on the Communication From The Commission To The European Parliament, The Council, The European Economic And Social Committee And The Committee Of The Regions “Tackling early school leaving: A key contribution to the Europe 2020 Agenda”. The project aims to develop and disseminate an innovative pedagogic method, based on the centrality of pupils and of their emotional needs and requests, aiming to prevent and/or to face the early school leaving phenomenon. The aim is to develop an unique pattern flexible enough to be adapted to the specific contexts and conditions of the different regions and individual situations. The Like Project involves 9 partners coming from 6 EU countries. Partners are research centers, no profit organizations, authorities and associations with long-standing relevant experience and strongly involved with problems connected to the education system governance and development. The project expects that the pupils learn to fill their existential, communicative, relational and training needs; develop the motivation to study; know their own learning style and begin to exercise it with mastery; discover the strategic importance of understanding, and the conditions under which it occurs. This is possible through a process of meaningful learning and training, in order to identify, build, hold, correlate concepts and meanings, to understand the importance of collaboration and teamwork and to be able to perform their cognitive and socio-emotional growth. Operators and teachers must improve their ability to "read" the starting positions of students in terms of identifying cultural levels, modes of communication and relational learning styles of each. These results will be achieved using a pedagogical kit designed and realized by the project the effectiveness of which will be tested with instruments provided by the Partnership. The project aims to set up and transfer the methodologies and effective tools to bring out recommendations useful to identify and combat the phenomenon of school drop-out and obtain target required by the target communities in the partnership countries, giving a contribution to the redefinition of school curricula with regard to life skills. The LIKE project can represent an organic and political process and not an overtly mechanistic practice involving detailed comparisons and complex ranking procedures. For this reason the partner organizations, from different countries, will explore the differences and also identify similarities about how to face the drop-out, moving towards models, practices and analyses that can cross the borders and become “European”. In the long term, an elevated rate of educational success (reduction of school drop-outs) and an increased levels of youth participation in educational and vocational curricula with a consequent reduction of the competences mismatches between educational systems and labor market are expected.
As phrased prior to the project, Early School Leaving (ESL) is an obstacle to economic growth and employment for EU Countries. It obstructs productivity and competitiveness, and fuels poverty and social exclusion. In 2019, the share of early leavers from education and training in the EU stood at 10.2%. In other words, one in ten individuals aged 18-24 years with at most a lower secondary level of educational attainment (ISCED 0 - 2) was not engaged in any further education and training in the four weeks preceding the survey. The Europe 2020 target was to reduce the rates of early school leaving in the EU to below 10% by 2020. In 2019, this share was already below 10% in a majority of regions with some of the lowest shares concentrated in Eastern Europe and in capital regions. Among the EU regions, the lowest share of early leavers from education and training (1.7%) was recorded in the coastal/island region of Jadranska Hrvatska (Croatia). There were three other regions where no more than 1 in 50 young people were early leavers: the capital regions of Czechia and Lithuania — Prague and Sostinės regionas (both 1.9%) — and the Greek region of Kentriki Makedonia (2.0%). Young people who leave education and training prematurely are bound to lack skills and qualifications, and to face serious, persistent problems on the labour market. It aims to inspire and generate the development of a comprehensive approach to ESL. As defined in the booklet edited by the European Commission and entitled 'A whole school approach to tackling early school leaving', Early school leaving ESL is a pressing concern for the individual, for society and the economy. The skills and competences gained in upper secondary education are seen as the minimum credentials for successful labour market entry and as the foundation for further learning and training opportunities. These skills and competencies help prepare young people for life, developing the potential in every person so that they become fulfilled and active citizens. Yet 11.1% of 18 to 24 year-olds have left education and training without completing an upper secondary programme according to Eurostat 2014 data. The project proposal was based on the Communication From The Commission To The European Parliament, The Council, The European Economic And Social Committee And The Committee Of The Regions “Tackling early school leaving: A key contribution to the Europe 2020 Agenda”. The project aims to develop and disseminate an innovative pedagogic method, based on the centrality of pupils and of their emotional needs and requests, aiming to prevent and/or to face the early school leaving phenomenon. The aim is to develop a unique pattern flexible enough to be adapted to the specific contexts and conditions of the different regions and individual situations. The Like Project involved 9 partners coming from 6 EU countries. Partners are research centers, no profit organizations, authorities and associations with long-standing relevant experience and strongly involved with problems connected to the education system governance and development. The project expected that the pupils learn to fill their existential, communicative, relational and training needs; develop the motivation to study; the project managed to fulfil these requirements. This was possible through a process of meaningful learning and training, in order to identify, concepts and meanings, to understand the importance of collaboration to be able to perform their cognitive and socio-emotional growth. Prior to the project we believed that operators and teachers had to improve their ability to "read" the starting positions of students in terms of identifying cultural levels, modes of communication and relational learning styles of each. The project aimed to set up and transfer the methodologies and effective tools to bring out recommendations useful to identify and combat the phenomenon of school drop-out and obtain target required by the target communities in the partnership countries, giving a contribution to the redefinition of school curricula with regard to life skills. During the project in the collaboration of the partners, a Pedagogical Toolkit was created after the conceptualization of the model had been finalized. The procedures described in the Toolkit were implemented in the schools of the partner countries. Following the implementation, the impact of the procedures on the life skills of students was measured with the developed survey tool phrased in IO2. The results were analyzed jointly together with the partners.