Background of the project: Four organisations in the Netherlands, Finland, Spain and Norway with long experiences from EU-financed youth inclusion projects initiated this Project titled "CLUE TO INCLUSION". We have all four been working with youth with fewer opportunities (YFO) for many years and we are more and more convinced of the strength of non-formal learning methods in our work with this target group. Non-formal Learning (NFL) is a bottom-up approach, based on the interests, motivation and active participation of the individual young person, in addition to focussing on the young person's resources, and is a good way of getting young people into learning situations which they perceive as positive, fun and relevant. The advantages of NFL methods are especially high regarding young people, who - because of various reasons - have left school prematurely. After many years working with non-formal learning opportunities for YFO/early school leavers, we are now ready to take the next step: to prevent/reduce early school leaving. We invited two VET schools, one VET provider and one Research Institute to become partners in this project (plus two Associated VET partner Schools!) in order to start looking more closely to the potential benefits of NFL and to go into an innovative proces of how to implement NFL methods - like Erasmus+ youth projects - in a formal education (VET) environment. Project description: Too many young people leave school prematurely running a high risk of being unemployed and socially marginalised. Statistically the figures of early school leaving are very high in Europe, especially at VET schools, and there is an urgent need to think differently and innovative. In this 14 months project "CLUE TO INCLUSION", the eight partners want to reveal the potential of non-formal learning methods to prevent early school leaving and to improve the implementation of NFL in a FL environment. Our target group is upper secondary students at risk of early school leaving, most of them in the age group of 16-21 yrs.The NFL partners have long experiences with the use of non-formal learning methods in their work with early school leavers and other youth with fewer opportunities, and we want to transfer best practices and experiences to VET schools/providers and vice versa. Objectives: The long-term objective of the project is to prevent early school leaving. Our short-term project aim is to analyse the potential of non-formal learning methods in VET schools. We want to develop one or more practical models to implement NFL projects as part of the regular school system, in addition to design a tool to support the learning process and to measure and visualise the learning outcomes for students and their schools. We will in this project focus a lot on Erasmus+ project types, like group/short term EVS and Group Exchanges, but also other non-formal learning methods will be of interest. Through our own network and desktop research, we will search for theories and best practice on using non-formal learning at upper secondary schools, as part of the regular school system. Students and teachers and other stakeholders will be interviewed to provide us knowledge about the needs in VET schools.The desk top research and interviews will result in an article, published in International Journal of educational Research, Nordic Studies in Education or Nordic Journal of Pedagogy and Critique. Activities: We will work on two levels in this project, on the European and the local level. On the local level we will work in working groups and develop concrete models for the implementation of non-formal learning methods as part of the regular VET school system, for example Erasmus+ project types like EVS or Group Exchanges. In the end of the project there will be Local Multiplier Events in each of the 4 partner countries. On the European Level, we will organise two Transnational Partner Meetings, one in Spain in October 2018 and one in Finland in March 2019. The transnational partner meetings will enable all partners to exchange experiences and good practices, to cooperate on the Intellectual Outputs, to help trouble-shooting and find solutions on the encountered challenges and last but not least motivate each other. During the rest of the project period, the eight partners will keep in contact through regular skype meetings.The desktop research, interviews and questionnaires will be on both the transnational and local level, giving us input on facts, theories, new ideas, best practice and other useful information which will give the best conditions to make tailormade models/tools. Follow up: The partners will in the final stage of the project decide on a new project putting in practice the designed model(s) and tool(s).
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