The aim of the project is to assist the complex development of students' life-management skills especially to prepare them for responsible decision making during their education in connection with learning path and career choice. Life-management skills are described as skills that are essential to make the most out of life. Life skills are usually associated with managing and living a better quality of life. They help us to accomplish our ambitions and live to our full potential. Any skill that is useful in our life can be considered a life skill. Life-management skills are improving with our personality and family and schools need to work together in the proper process of development. SUPREM is a project that wants to give background to students, giving tools to their teachers and parents what will help them to cooperate, communicate to achieve a supportive environment. A better level of life-management skills of a student will increase the quality of academic and practical skills and knowledge, will make students more able to make the right choices. This strengthens the value of career pathway and labour market skills. Better life-skills support students to find their way and place in the educational system and with better satisfaction, early school leaving can be decreased. The project develops open, free accessible materials what support stakeholders to work together and at the same time parts of the developed educational resources are able to used by individuals separately. Every developed material will be web-based and digital, with a tool that uses the community-aspect of stakeholders and the needs of the young generation to reach information online immediately, share and contribute in the online space. The project presents a complex approach and solution what needs experience from different areas. It was unequivocal at the beginning of the project preparation that the applied service-design method needs the active involvement of stakeholders, so the partners should present a wide range of connections. In the partnership, there are 3 schools, 1 NGO and 3 SME's collaborating to improve the aimed complex solution. The diversity appears in their professional areas as well but the main interest is common in each partner: they all involved in education and personal development. 1. The project will present a complex package for various stakeholders of life-management skills development of students. - educational material for school-usage, target group: students and teachers; - training curricula and method to train teachers, target group: teachers, schools; - collection of case studies with analysation and connected good practices and suggestions, target group: parents, teachers; - a self-assessment tool for students to define the improvement needs, and the strong and weak areas in the current level of life-skills. 2. The project focuses on life-skill development as the common task of students, parents and teachers. Supporting their common work and especially the involvement of parents in the work of schools is an essential part of the project. Each intellectual outputs will highlight those elements and show possibilities what are suitable to link parents and schools (teachers). 3. During the development of the intellectual outputs and the whole process of the project work, the consortium is going to apply the service-design method. This method focuses on the needs of the clients and future users and to ensure their continuous involvement the partners will work closely together with focus groups and will consult with them during the development process. The project intends to arrange two student mobilities and one joint-staff training session for teachers to get inputs from the target groups to the development. In different stages of the project the partners will need feedback from the stakeholders about the "what?" and also about the "how?". Service-design as a development methodology of supporting activities will provide the best and most suitable and sustainable products. Service-design has been already applied at the preparation stage of the project when the partners carried out a survey to have a clear view of the current situation of pupils' life-management skills. 4. Identification and collection of the essential life-management skills what are needed to be improved to support students to make decisions of their own life. These skills are usually identified and put in the group of social skills but there is a different approach what we address to help productive and efficient decision-making of students during their learning pathway and their career choice.
The project reached the following objectives. DEVELOPMENT OF LIFE SKILLS (KEY COMPETENCES) of learners through the development of student projects. The project-based learning modules are complex, in which life skills are defined and described as learning objectives. We have successfully achieved our goal in the area of TACKLING EARLY SCHOOL LEAVING. In the model we have developed, we provide students with exciting, interesting and experiential learning activities, encourage dialogue between parents, teachers and students and provide methodological support for teachers. All this can contribute to reducing pupils' experiences of failure, which has a direct impact on early school leaving. The intellectual outputs developed in the project will also provide teachers with methodological and attitudinal innovation, which will contribute to STRENGTHENING THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE TEACHING ROLE in the 21st century.
The idea for the project was born years ago, when experts in school education were increasingly confronted with the fact that during the transition from primary to secondary school, pupils and parents were not being adequately supported to make the best choices. While in most countries entry to upper secondary school is linked to pupils' academic performance and the direction of progression, little or no consideration is given to the fact that life skills are essential for the success of future careers and should play an important role in the choice of the right pathway. This was the starting point for the design of the project, with an emphasis on supporting the joint work of pupils, teachers and parents with a heterogeneous range of partners, combining different European approaches. We identified a need for life skills in the school educational arena, a lack of project-based and experiential learning for 12-14 year olds. We have also identified as a gap area the lack of tripartite dialogue and collaboration in the process of career choice, for which we have developed an online reflection tool (assessment tool) and case studies for parents.