1st & 2nd: First Generation, Second Chance: let's fight school dropout with the family and the community. A training program for 360 immigrant parents to prevent school absenteeism in their children. International reports like PISA or TALIS reveal the great social and education challenges within school systems nowadays. The dramatic dropout rate of students in compulsory secondary education and the unequal results of students (depending on their social and economic context) are just two issues which have been tackled in this project. Reducing the dropout rate has also been an objective for the European 2020 targets. In Spain, there is 14% school absenteeism; in Italy it is 18.7%. Other objectives included in the ET 2020 have been: to foster social cohesion and equality in communities and improve quality and efficiency in education; to make use of innovative measures to combat demotivation and absenteeism. To achieve that 15% of the adult population will engage in lifelong learning programs (which accept participants from 25 to 64 years old). The target group have been immigrant adults who are parents of primary and secondary students. The Education 2030 document stresses the Education Council’s recommendation of improving the teaching-learning of foreign languages. As for new technologies, this project has included the creation of an e-learning platform for parents on various topics: the host country’s education system, psychological support for teenagers, language assistance for specific terms related to education and translations into Arabic, English and French. The host language classes have been aimed at getting a CEFR A2 level, which is necessary for obtaining nationality in most of the counties participating in the project. The Host Education System component is part of the nationality exam in most of the projects’ participant countries. The primary and secondary schools in the 6 communities of the partner institutions have students from many different nationalities. Some start school very late and, in general, their academic outcomes are not positive. In many cases, learning the host language is a major obstacle in improving their learning process. Moreover, school absenteeism among these students is very high. The aim of this project has been to provide primary and secondary schools in multicultural communities with a set of tools to aid the students and their parents to integrate and succeed at school. Integration has been tackled from various perspectives. The training program for parents would provide language support for parents so that they could help their children with their homework; understand school documents and correspondence; and, for North African immigrants, enable mothers to get out of the house and socialise with women of other nationalities. In both primary and secondary education, parental involvement has been very important and has been shown to improve academic results. This project aims at preventing school leaving in the immigrant community and to make parents active participants in the school environment. The parental training program has consisted of: - Language workshops: These have been aimed at newcomer foreign parents and based on the acquisition of the host language. The focus has been on specific subject matter being made accessible to parents, where the necessary school rules have been transmitted to follow the schooling of children. Regarding school information, the first content which has been pased on to parents has enabled them to read and understand school documents (school bulletins , timetables, report cards, assessments), oral or written exchanges with the teachers and others in the school (meetings, appointments with staff ) after the course. The issues which we have tackled are: -Civics: the knowledge of European values, active citizenship, rights and duties, gender issues and their implementation in society. - Psychological support: learning strategies; encouraging students to continue studying; conflict prevention and resolution in adolescents; prevention of intra-family violence; sex education; prevention of sexually transmitted diseases and other illnesses related to adolescence, such as bulimia, anorexia, etc. -Training parents to use the e-learning platform for language courses which have also included other useful information with the contents of the programme. We must be aware that any social change has an impact on education and that the current educational system in a lot of countries has faced new challenges and new opportunities due to the increase of immigrants coming, especially from Africa. In this sense a lot of European countries, those of the partners in our project, have experienced a lot of social, economic and cultural changes in the last ten years which has made the education reality more complex. The uneven or unequal investment in education among European countries makes institutions think about solutions to save this economic unevenness. Society has some social responsibilities too such as the poor involvement of families in the education of children.
-To have an understanding of the school's language of communication; the host country’s education system and the host legislation in terms of schooling rules, rights and duties of citizens, etc. - To guarantee success in all the educational stages. the percentage of immigrant students repeating at all ages is higher than among other students. -To combat school dropout and absenteeism among migrants. -To open participating institutions to the community. -To internationalize the participating institutions. -To foster community synergies in the participating institutions and create a network among public schools which is a growing tendency. -To train parents in different fields: language, transversal education (environmental, gender equality, rights and duties of European citizenship etc.) -To contribute to the democratic parents’ participation in the school. -To enhance the development of language, digital and other competences among our migrant learners. -To foster the enriching value of diversity and inclusion in adult education schools, in communities and in society. -To promote the Erasmus+ programme among all the citizens of different origins and generations. -To foster critical thinking, a sense of social justice, the need for green policies and knowledge of the rights and duties a democracy offers. -To improve the quality of education by creating a nice welcoming school atmosphere. -To raise awareness of the importance of training and qualifications in order to obtain a good job and to be less vulnerable to suffering from labour exploitation. -To foster the connection between education and occupation employment helping parents to improve their language competence and obtain a certification as a step towards employment or job promotion. -To provide parents with a basic labour employment orientation training (knowledge transferable to their children).
The neighborhoods, where the six participating organizations are located, have a high percentage of migrants and most of the students in the primary schools are migrants of second generation. A recent survey has proved that school dropout in Secondary Education among migrants is higher among migrants than among locals. The commitment of immigrant parents in the school routine of their children is also less significant than that of the local parents. This poor involvement is the consequence of the bad language command of immigrant parents and refugees. The democratic participation in the school life is also very low as a result of language skills of parents among other reasons. All the participating institutions have many years of experience in developing social integration and equality projects. The participating institutions have a large tradition in cooperating with primary and secondary schools and the synergies created have already produced good results. The participating partners have already organized training programs for immigrants and newcomers and they have a panel of experts (trainers, psychologists and social workers) who cooperate in these training programs. The six institutions have a lot of stakeholders to develop this community, integration project whose aim is to combat school dropout among migrants thorough adult institutions. Moreover, the needs and target groups parents are chosen as the project’s target group as they are a channel through which the traditions that prevent the immigrant families from enjoying the full-rights citizenship and education can be changed. In some cases, immigrant parents don’t have any access to the job market or language of the host country. Through this project we aim at giving immigrant parents the same equal opportunities as other members of European society. There have been some preference rules as to become accepted in the training programme as we expect a lot of applications. Parents of students at risk of absenteeism, parents of students with poorer results and fewer opportunities and parents of students who have arrived at the recipient country recently. Networking with heterogeneous local and regional stakeholders ensures specialization of the trainers, community impact and a large number of learners.