Eurostat records from 2018 show clearly there has been still almost 20 million of young people Neither Employed nor in Education and Training (hereinafter called NEETs) in EU. Lowering youth unemployment and supporting the engagement of as many young Europeans as possible is at the heart of the EU policy agenda. The most vulnerable subgroup of NEETs is young people with the lowest level of educational attainment. The prevention of being NEETs should start already in the last grade of primary school when pupils are standing in front of one of their most crucial decisions in life: what career path will I take? Do I want to even continue in further education? This project wants to link the point of prevention of being NEET with support to boost the interest of pupils in technical, scientific and mathematical disciplines with a high degree of innovativeness among students of the last grade of primary schools due to the increasing lack of qualified and professionally educated workers in the labour market, particularly in aforementioned disciplines. In most of EU primary schools pupils can consult their career and what personalities are suitable for a given work, however what is usually missing at primary schools is that young students also need to gain more of the motivation, popularization of technically oriented apprenticeships before choosing a further direction of their education. It often happens pupils do not like technically oriented subjects due to lack of popularization and emphasis on the importance, prestige and innovativeness used in technical fields. This is exactly what this project intends to address at a transnational level, ensuring the necessary transfer of best practices from foreign experts focusing on innovative course methods and technical innovations (e.g. 3D printing, virtual reality, artificial intelligence, Internet of things, etc.). The project specifically aims at the creation of the methodology on how to correctly identify the pupils at risks of dropping out of school, demotivating to the next level of education, the associated unemployment, and destined for being future NEET. Partners will exchange best practices on how and according to what characteristics they will identify vulnerable pupils. Process of identification would run with the help of teachers and youth workers as they know the best the background of pupils and are close to their families. Consequently, 6 sets of courses curricula with the innovative method of action learning will be specially created in cooperation with foreign experts and based on transferred best practices. Partners will cooperate also with organisations/SMEs dealing with technical disciplines and new technologies. The result of such cooperation will be the awakening of pupils’ interest in technical education in new fields with a high level of innovation and a certain prestige. This should facilitate their choice of secondary education and prevent them from leaving formal education with completed primary schools. The project believes by the end of the project, at least 40 out of 75 representatives (representing 15% out of total number of involved pupils) will successfully finish with project courses and enrol in secondary vocational education with a focus on any technical field. At the end of the project, partners will organize a final conference in Prague that will aim at raising awareness of NEETs phenomenon at European level and presenting project innovative solution and its success, including project outputs and impacts on the target group.
Our project has aimed primarily at prevention of raising the number of those students who will become NEET. To achieve it, project needed firstly to map the situation and analyze what are the factors and profiles of the pupils at risk. During the mapping, project also wanted to already find out what modern technologies are most popular among today's primary school pupils. Based on the actual data, project has tried to deliver the methodologies to the teachers on action learning courses in selected modern technologies and pilot them in all endaged countries. Other crucial aims of the project have been: 1) boost the motivation of students to study modern technologies 2) try to integrate an innovative Action Learning approach into the methodology for action learning courses 3) provide simple tool for teachers to be able to analyze the situation in their classes regarding the NEET phenomenon 4) provide the methodologies of courses focusing on different modern technologies to the teachers who can lead the courses following these methodologies 5) raise the general awareness about NEET phenomenon and importance of getting skiils and knowledge in modern technologies that are not being thought in the schools usually
We wrote this project as innovative prevention of NEET phenomenon through motivating pupils attending the primary schools to study modern technologies. We've known from teachers there is nothing combining the prevention of being NEET together with actions leading to motivate already pupils at primary schools to study modern technologies as work trades have been demanding more and more specialists who have already some experience with a given technology. Project has also adressed the need of pupils and teachers to try practically oriented courses based on Action Learning approach that nobody had known from the participating schools. Project combines the prevention, practically oriented first touch with the modern technologies and action learning approach which makes the project unique and we are happy the project was successful.