Early school leaving still remain a relevant issue nowadays, even if great efforts are underway by the EC and Member States for achieving the Europe 2020 target of reducing the share of early school leavers below the 10 % benchmark. In 2016, an average of 10.7% of young people (aged 18-24) in the EU-28 were early leavers from education and this problem is very similar in ESY project partner countries. For these reasons partner organizations have identified common needs and opportunities to share their experiences, practices and methods in prevention and fight against early school leaving of young students espe cially with fewer opportunities. Specific objectives of the ESY project are: - sharing partners’ methodologies and best practices; - increasing capacity of partners to operate at European level; - improving learning performance of students at risk of leaving school early. The partnership is composed by 4 organizations form 4 EU countries (UK, Portugal, Greece and Italy), which are all active in the field of non-formal education for preventing and combating early school leaving. Participants will be young students in secondary school, 14 – 19 years old, who needs extra coaching to keep up with their studies and to help with their homework as well as motivational and educational orientation support. The project will pay particular attention to young people with fewer opportunities. The project work-plan will be as follows: WP1 Project management and coordination; WP2 Networking and sharing experiences; WP3 Transnational Training Activity (short term joint staff training session); WP4 Communication and dissemination. The project approach will be based on experience in similar activities successfully implemented and/or are currently underway by project partners in their respective Countries: particular attention will be paid to practical tasks (sport and games activities, creative and cultural laboratories, workshops and other informal education activities) for active engagement of participants. Finally, for sharing experiences and practices among partners, within the project work plan 4 transnational project meetings and study visits will be organized and one transnational training activity, as far as the mobility of staff has been identified as a precious source of information for partners, as well as and an ideal way for transferring practices and methods, creating and developing the partnership and promoting cooperation and new collaborative partnerships, also beyond the end of the project. The project will have direct impact on partner organizations, which will share practices, develop new methods, tools and innovative approaches to better combat learning failures amongst youngsters; and will increase their capacity to cooperate at EU level, and improve the quality of their work environment thanks to cooperation with partners from other EU Countries. Last but not least, the project will have direct impact on young participants, which are expected to improve their learning performances and complete their education; to increase their motivation and satisfactions in daily studying. Helping young people to be more confidence in them self, to enhance their skills, competences, and employability, to become active European citizens and to participate actively in democratic and society life, will lead to long-term economic and social benefits and will contribute to create the conditions for a more equity and inclusive society.
The ESY Project “Easy School for Young Students” aimed at sharing good practices in prevention of early school leaving, especially for young students from vulnerable groups. Particularly the project focused on transferring the “Sport& Thought, Football as Therapy” approach to other partners form Italy, Spain and Greece. “Sport & Thought” is an innovative way of working with adolescents with behavioural issues, that uses a proven psychodynamic model of working with adolescents and fuses the sport of football, psychodynamic thinking and theory to act as a preventative tool to early school leaving, via the use of sport and the symbolism of sport. Recent IPPR research (https://www.ippr.org/research/publications/making-the-difference ) underlines psychological reasoning behind ESL and potential ways to counter it, and high economic and social costs of school exclusion (study estimates that the cost of exclusion is around £370,000 per young person in lifetime education, benefits, healthcare and criminal justice costs). Even though great efforts have been undertaken at European level for reducing the share of early school leavers below the 10 % benchmark by 2020, ESL still remain a relevant issue nowadays. Overall the evaluation findings show that the ESY Project has mainly met its original objectives and some activities exceeded the initial expectation. First of all, the achievements of the project were largely positive with reference to sharing the S&T model with partners and exchange of good practices. 17 persons from partners (mainly psychologists, teachers, educators, pedagogues and other experts with experiences in working with students with complex and special educational needs) were trained at the 3-days London-based Transnational Training Course and mobility action; and 9 people from partners took part into two transnational meetings in Milan and Lisbon for exchange of ideas, good practices. The methodology used in the mobility action and project meetings was based on experiential learning and practical participation to practical sessions in classroom and on the field, the teaching methods were dynamic, with group discussions and practical sessions in order to assure the active involvement of participants. In connection with the course in London, the “Sport & Thought toolkit” has been realized and distributed to partners (and also made available to interested parties online) in order to go deeper in S&T approach, and better understand the S&T innovative intervention that uses football sessions as therapy for young students at risk of social exclusion. The ESY project’ results have been very positive with reference to development of cooperation and European network of organizations operating in ESL. Communication and dissemination activities undertaken via online tools, project promotional materials, local workshops and interaction with other projects in the fields of educations, youth and sport contributed to raise awareness on importance of prevention and combating ESL. In this way the project also created the conditions for increasing partners’ capacity to cooperate internationally, to develop new collaborative projects (e.g. the “Sport4life project” which further develop British coordinator and Italian partner and aims at promoting skills development, wellbeing and health-enhancing physical activity among young students), and last but not least, to enlarge the EU network in other EU Countries and beyond the initial consortium (with organisations in Spain and Lithuania and a new project titled “FIS4YES Football in Schools for Young Students”). The impact of the project has been largely positive. Participants in mobility action and transnational project meetings developed their knowledge, acquired new skills and competences in working with young people with behavioural issues; they also increased their capacity to work and cooperate at transnational level. Partner organizations benefited from synergies and exchange of good practices and benefited from different experiences of other partners, improved their capacity to cooperate at European level and the quality of their work environment. The project impact on young students at risk of school exclusion, and schools directly involved in the project, was also positive: project findings so far, underline how the project supported schools in tackling early school leaving and reducing their ESL rate, as well as improving school financial performance, reputation and ranking. Project’s results were particularly positive with reference to the reduction of ESL rates among young students directly involved in project activities. Finally, relevant stakeholders outside the consortium benefited from synergies between the world of education and informal/ non-formal education in dealing with ESL and education failures, form strengthening cooperation between different actors in the fields of education, youth and social inclusion.