Play Equal- Leveling the field of education (PE-19) Play Equal (PE-19) Is all about creating equal opportunities and social inclusion. Children (in general) are the change makers of the future generation. Every child must have the opportunity and tools to reach his or her full potential, regardless of background, the level of education of the parents or their financial resources. Education is the most important tool for promoting equal opportunities. If people have equal opportunity to gain education and skills, this goes a long way to promoting equal opportunities in the labour market. This project is specifically for students (between the age of 12-19 years) with disadvantaged backgrounds and fewer opportunities compared to their peers because of economic obstacles or cultural differences. Despite national and international effort to create equal opportunities for children, inequality rises within the educational system. Although the EU is making headway (f.e. The Erasmus+ Programme aims at promoting inclusion by facilitating the access to participants with disadvantaged backgrounds and fewer opportunities compared to their peers whenever disadvantage limits them) in focussing on equal opportunities and inclusion more needs to be done to: 1. facilitate this process on all levels (school, local and national government). 2. to make innovative approaches more widely available and sufficiently promoted. 3. Sharing of knowledge and resources, development of new and strengthening of existing models of social inclusion will be key to continuing growth of this focus point. When we create and facilitate equal opportunities and social inclusion we resolve disadvantages and give students a better and equal starting-point. We level the field of education and as a result students can take ownership of a successful ongoing learning pathway and this will enable a successful transition from school to the world of work (training / employment /tertiary education). It will help them stay in school and tackle ESL (Early School Leave). Talent development helps the student learn new competences, gain self-confidence and a feeling of belonging at school and in their community. This partnership has seven partners from three countries and it will deliver 6 intellectual outcomes. The partners represent the different type of stakeholders. PE-19 will create outputs that foster innovation on strategic (policy) level, management level (school) and operational level (curriculum): IO1: Learning social inclusion through (Best) practice IO2: Action research: framework and validating key-success factors IO3: Co-creating educative partnership between schools and parents IO4: Blueprint: Combining formal and non-formal methodologies for learning in an ongoing pathway IO5:Hackathon - an innovative way to bring new solutions to the table IO6: Aligning social inclusion within school and governmental policy Intellectual outcomes we will deliver: We use a multi-level approach in this project. Interventions are directed towards all stakeholders (students, parents, teachers, school management and governmental level). Methodologies that will be used in the process: - A combination of formal and non/informal learning methodology - Work Based Learning (WBL) - Connecting to the labour market (via apprenticeships, getting to know the world of work, enhancing social competencies ) - The use of creative and innovative methods, -Use of ICT (hackathon) All partners will fully disseminate the project’s outputs within the school context and in Local Learning Hubs, whilst building partnerships that collaborates to shape the increase of sustainable inclusion for young people with challenging backgrounds. Despite the common aim and goals, each partner will have the possibility for creating a 'couleur locale': a specific local context. Every country and municipality has specific legislation, policy and focus points within this subject. Every partner has to create new or strengthen existing networks to disseminate and to get input to bring this project further. This is necessary for the outcomes of the project, but also to increase the sustainable impact; creating a change within schools and policy! PE-19 will transfer knowledge across multi-educational environments: Secondary education, VET, educational policy makers & within the world of work. It will build high quality tools & transferable methodologies, guidelines and tangible results to promote (social) inclusion and equal opportunities within Europe, build competences by students and influence policy so students can meet their full potential.
Every child should be given the opportunities and tools to reach his or her full potential, regardless of the parents' background, level of education or their financial resources. Education is the main instrument for promoting equal opportunities. We level the educational field and thereby give young people ownership of a successful continuous learning path; one successful transition from school to further education and from school to the labor market. Improving equal opportunities has a direct impact on combating early school leaving. Talent development helps young people to acquire new competences, increase self-confidence and promote a sense of belonging at school and in their communities. The focus of Play Equal is on creating equal opportunities and sustainable inclusion for young people, vulnerable young people with a migration background, and a lower socio-economic background between 12-19 years. This target group should be given opportunities to learn new competencies, gain self-confidence and a sense of belonging at school and in their community. That starts with awareness, but also with inspiration from others. We look for partnership with parents and network partners, but also for active input from students. From these project experiences we come to policy recommendations; to be used by schools but also by government agencies and social partner organizations.
We as a local government want to pay more attention to this innovative topic of creating equal opportunity and social inclusion. Developing methods and organizational forms for personalized learning fit in with our policy goals. With the local educational partners we have a local educational agenda. We share goals and objectives and strategies to achieve those goals and goals together. Our municipality has many years of experience in leading EU projects (Comenius, Leonardo). Schools asked us to take the coordinating lead for this project. We believe in co-creation and therefore it is important to be part of the exchange, to get the opportunity to exchange different between the different countries in this application. European exchange will give the development of personalized learning an additional boost in all countries involved. These are themes that are also high on the agenda of educational institutions in our municipality. In this project we work together with two local schools that work on innovation in the field of equal opportunities. We believe this theme is high on the agenda in all European countries, we selected project partners that also want to work on equal opportunities in a creative and innovate way in co-creation between governmental organizations and educational institutions.