There are several countries in Europe where the early school leaving is too much high and, unfortunately, even is increasing. This situation is usually preceded by school failure. This is the reason why we are going to try to find efficient strategies to prevent these two problems. The pupils who usually have early school leaving and school failure tend to be pupils with some disadvantages, such as refugees, immigrants, pupils with economical problems, with learning disabilities, pupils whose parents have serious problems and, even, have a high risk of exclusion. We have prepared this project making an evaluation of the teachers, pupils and parents needs and, on the other hand, a meta-analysis of theoretical information about how the inclusive methodologies used by teachers in the educational process and the better collaboration between parents and teachers, could prevent these two problems. We have found that in those schools where teachers use inclusive methodologies, all pupils can learn through their preferred way of learn. So, we propose:1- to study how to help to teachers to reflect about these approaches, and how break the barriers they sometimes have to implement these strategies in the school; and 2- to reflect on how to involve better to these pupils families in their schooling, trying to get an increase of the collaboration between teachers and parents, specially with those parents that have some disadvantages and traditionally didn´t participate in this schooling. The summary of our objectives are: A- To reflect at a European level on: a-the teachers barriers and needs using inclusive methodologies and b-the families in disadvantages involvement, as a way to prevent early school leaving and school failure of their children, trying to help them with our training; B-To analyze our educational systems, laws and daily practices, related to the strategies used to prevent early school leaving and school failure, to know our strong and weak points. C-To find, implement and check new strategies to prevent early school leaving and school failure, and to write the best strategies in a Guide of good practices. The participants directly involved in the project are 6 institutions: 2 schools (Bulgaria and Croatia); 2 psychopedagogical teams (Romania and Spain); 1 research centre specialized in the creation of educational and multimedia materials (Greece) and a local educational authority that has implemented a project to improve their schools through the inclusion of the creativity, social and emotional skills, etc (Portugal). The professionals directly involved are Educational Psychologists, Teachers, Social workers, Educators specialized in the development of workshops to train creativity, social and emotional skills to pupils, researchers, computer designers, artists. Main activities and results. We are going to reflect at an European level about the strategies that we usually put in practice in our schools to answer to all pupils needs. Then, we want to find the best strategies to prevent the early school leaving with these results: 1-Statistical research of the teachers and families needs; 2-Meta-analysis of the best strategies to prevent school failure and early school leaving with the help of the local social authorities and other bodies who work with disadvantaged groups.3-Design and development of some training activities for teachers and families to train them in the skills needed to increase the implementation of inclusive methodologies (teachers) and the collaboration with the teachers to prevent the early school leaving and school failure (parents); 4-Creation and maintenance of an European Inclusive Schools Net; 5-Implementation of “Learning communities” in several schools and 6-Creation and dissemination of a Guide of good practices regarding these problems. Methodology. a-Metha-analysis about how our educational systems deal with early school leaving and school failure; b-Administration of the questionnaires to teachers and parents and meetings with them to know well their actitudes and ideas about how to answer to all pupils needs; c-Discussion groups where firstly we share information about different strategies that the science says that are useful to prevent these problems and then, we make a reflection to find new ways to implement these strategies; d-Observation of good practices in several centres; e-Training activities for teachers and parents to help them to implement these strategies; f-We train them to participate in the European inclusive schools net; We will share and disseminate our results with open licence. We are going to include our training activities (with the improvements obtained in this Project) in our Annual plan of functioning. We´ll keep our Net in the future, encouraging to our teachers and families to join it. We will promote/keep the new ways to collaborate with local social authorities to improve the most disadvantaged families involvement in the school.
1- To know new strategies to prevent the school failure and early school leaving, for example, better ways to collaborate with other instutions, how to help to the teachers to break barriers in the implementation of inclusive methodologies. 2- To design and develop training activities for teachers that could help them to overcome the fears to use on a daily basis the methodologies that are considered as innovative and inclusive and that could contribute to improve the teachers competences and skills. 3- To design and develop some workshops for families to help them to improve some skills, like communication skills, to increase their colaboration with their children´s school, to break some negative actitudes against the school and to favor a more positive point of view about teachers. 4- To help to teachers and families to reflect on these situation (early school leaving) and to design our materials and training activities thanks to their contributions, ideas, reflections... 5- To help to teachers to develop better teaching-learning processes, to answer to the different type of pupils, taking into account those pupils with some disadvantages and trying to implement the strategies and methodologies that are known as inclusive.
Murcia has one of the highest figures in early school leaving. In our funcioning as guidances in our schools, we have observed the difficulties that the teachers have in the process of implementation of inclusive methodologies or the lack of collaboration between teachers and families, especially with those that are in a disadavataged situation. We had made an analysis of needs of the teachers and families and concluded that we needed to explore new strategies to prevent early school leaving. The most important needs we observed were: 1-We, as instutions that participated in the project, needed to observe new good practices in the prevention of early school leaving to help teachers to break fears against the implementation of inclusive methodologies and other strategies to prevent early school leaving; 2- Teachers had to receive new and more efficient training activities that help them to break the barriers in the implementation of inclusive methodologies, and 3- The families could benefit of some training activities -workshops-to help them to participate and to colaborate with teachers in the educational process in a better way.