One difficulty with NEET as a categorisation is that it lumps together a wide range of individuals from diverse backgrounds and circumstances under one grouping and, in doing so, defines young people by what they are not, rather than who they are (Yates and Payne 2006; Spielhofer et al. 2009). In this project when the term NEET is used it specifically refers to young people with a previous negative educational experience, or early school-leavers, who have failed to complete formal education. The share of young people between the ages of 20 and 34 years neither in employment nor in education and training in 2016 stood at 12.4% in DE; 21.3% in CY; 14.8% in UK; 18.5% in IE; 18.0% in PL; 15.0% in FI; 16.2% in CZ and 22.5% in HR. With a record number of NEETs following the financial and economic crisis, there have been concerns among policymakers that a whole generation of young people in the EU could remain out of the labour market for years to come. Research evidence suggests that young people can deal relatively well with short spells of unemployment. Longterm disengagement, however, is likely to have a scarring effect on future labour market participation as well as earnings over the life course and thus may lead to social exclusion for those affected. The primary objective of the project is to design and develop a bespoke challenge-based educational intervention aimed at re-engaging NEETs and supporting them to build skills and competences to assist their reintegration to education or employment. Partners will initially focus on building trust and confidence which may have been broken by past negative experiences and on addressing motivational deficits that act as barriers to engagement. Once NEETs are re-engaged the online escape room challenges will focus on the development of market oriented key competences. For the adult education professionals who will ultimately be charged with delivering and sustaining this new intervention partners are proposing a comprehensive in-service training programme to support them in using these new resources but also developing key skills to enable them create new challenges in the future. The online escape room challenges will use an embedded learning approach to re-engage NEETs in education and training. Resources will address the following 4 key competences: - Digital competence - Social and civic competence - Sense of initiative and entrepreneurship - Cultural awareness and expression Resources will be developed at 4 different levels, 2 resources per competence per level resulting in a suite of 32 escape room exercises being produced. The different levels will ensure that learners can engage with the tools developed regardless of prior educational history and that a sustainable educational experience for learners is provided allowing them to build their skills by advancing through available levels.
The Inclusion from NEETs combined with to fight youth unemployment is one of the key cornerstones of EU policy. The fact that these youths and young adults are outside of education, employment and training for long times can have major economic consequences in the future. In addition to economic risks, however, there are also individual risks for these young people, such as feelings of estrangement, insecurity and poor employment perspectives, youth crime, and mental and physical health problems. Therefore, the project "NEET-SYSTEM Online Educational Escape Rooms to Re-engage ESLs and NEETs" had mainly focus on the participants who fall under 2 key target group categories: (1) NEETs to build the key competences necessary to enable and supporting them to assist their reintegration to education or employment. (2) Adult education professionals trying to attract NEETs back to education and training. However, other stakeholders, such as NGOs, researchers, policy makers, adult education institutions, etc. can directly or indirectly benefits from the project’s deliverables. During the project period were reached direct (attending the discussions, workshops, presentations, conferences) between 100-200 NEETs and Adult education professionals per country. Indirect there were over 11 000 people following the news and results thorough social media or by publishing articles and Newsletters. From the national and transnational perspective, the NEET-SYSTEM-Consortium of 8 European countries and Switzerland has developed, piloted and implemented a multi-faceted and robust pedagogical model. Therefore, providing a suite of education materials to educator’s professionals and youth workers across Europe, there is significant potential for our approach - to re-engaging NEETs in education or employment - to be transferred to a range of contexts across the EU. Learning resources have been created, based on online escape rooms addressing the following 4 key competences: Digital competence; Social and civic competence; Sense of initiative and entrepreneurship; Cultural awareness and expression. As a result, a series of 32 Escape Rooms are available on the online learning platform https://www.neet-system.eu/en/learning-portal/the-game/:language/en. For the adult education professionals who are charged with delivering and sustaining this new intervention NEET-SYSTEM-Consortium has developed a comprehensive in-service training program to support them in using these new resources but also developing key skills to enable them create new challenges in the future. The proposed pedagogical model can also have a significant impact on future policy development in education. Therefore, all results were summarized in a policy paper specifically for policy makers. All developed resources are available online in 7 partner languages on website https://www.neet-system.eu/. The materials are available to share freely online, to access without issues with copyright or fees, and to re-use or re-purpose as it required by Adult education professionals.