As a result of the Covid-19 crisis in Europe, the need for guidance services, monitoring and support in schools for students is even more urgent to maintain the advances in the reduction of Early School Leaving and to promote the successful transitions to different educational levels and/or to the labour market. According to a June 2020 study by the Bertelsmann Foundation, the challenges for guidance generated by the Covid-19 crisis and post context are: to continue to offer support and follow-up with students and their families, to digitalize guidance and increase access to guidance resources for all, and the uncertainty of the overall situation is a justification of the need, now more than ever, for quality, structured and developed school guidance services. The TACKLE project responds by providing digital tools for schools to evaluate their guidance programs and services and gives them tools and training resources to create a plan of action and take the steps to improve and strengthen their guidance provision for students – with a focus on reducing early school leaving and improving successful educational transitions. The TACKLE tools support teachers and schools with digital guidance resources. The objective of TACKLE was to develop digital evaluation tools for Secondary schools to self-evaluate their academic and guidance program, to develop an academic and career guidance plan to tackle new challenges and offer an online training module for teachers and guidance practitioners and to support teachers in their role to support students, with digital tools and resources, in the unprecedented context that was generated by Covid-19. The digital TACKLE tools aimed to support schools in evaluating their services and work to assure that, despite the additional pressures on schools, they are prepared to tackle disadvantage and early school leaving. The project brought together a transnational partnership of organizations with expertise in academic and professional guidance, a public administration with competence over schools and educational policies and a technological partner. The partners combined their perspectives of guidance and to develop tools to tackle common, transnational issues that schools are facing, to fight against Early School Leaving, and also to assure that schools support their students' decision-making processes related to education and training pathways. To develop the TACKLE Digital Checklist partners held local focus groups (35 participants) to validate the framework, validation of items by 15 external experts, technical development of the checklist, translation of the tool from English to 4 other languages and the collection of 25 best practices in school & online guidance as well as an internal usability testing. The TACKLE Action Plan & Resource was elaborated by the definition of suggested actions according to the score of each checklist item, collection of related external resources and recommended material, translation into 4 languages, and technical development. The TACKLE tools were piloted with 78 educators/schools and the pilot results confirmed the areas of need for training. This analysis informed the elaboration of the Training Module materials over 6 thematic blocks each with a video, descriptive content, infographics, external resource links and self- assessment questions. The Training Module was tested with 85 teachers, guidance practitioners and other educators. Results of the project and the experiences of the 3 partner contexts were presented at a final seminar, among other dissemination activities. The results include the TACKLE Checklist – a digital self-evaluation and diagnostic tool for Secondary schools in 5 languages that is complement by the collection of 25 best practices of school guidance. The partners also created the digital TACKLE School Guidance Action Plan and Resource. This is a tool that creates an action plan for schools and includes 49 recommended actions for improvement and 115 related resources (across the 5 languages of the tool). The piloting of these two tools involved more than 75 educators/schools. The TACKLE Training Module gives training and resources on the areas of the Checklist and Action Plan and 85 teachers, tutors and guidance practitioners were trained in the pilot training. The training module has 6 blocks and each includes material in 5 languages – a video overview of the theme, written content, infographics and resources, links and related external resources, as well as self-assessment questions. The final seminar for dissemination and exploitation of the TACKLE Toolbox included the participation of all partners and a presentation of the results and impact of the project locally and transnationally to guidance practitioners, teachers and stakeholders. A total of 232 (goal 200) education professionals participated in the project activities. The desired impact of the TACKLE project is for the schools using the TACKLE toolbox to provide career education and guidance activities that support transitions to further education, training and work from Secondary Schools and to tackle Early School Leaving with a coherent and school community-wide guidance action plan implemented by trained professionals. The coronavirus crisis and its impact had given urgency to the need to ensure that schools and educators continue and strengthen their academic and professional guidance plans and resources in support of the transitions, decision-making and pathways of their students. This urgency and need continues in the post-Covid-19 context and the TACKLE toolbox is and will be relevant for schools to continue to strategically implement guidance actions and be guiding schools that tackle the complexities and support their students on their education and training pathways. The TACKLE toolbox is available on the website: https://www.thetackleproject.eu
The objective of TACKLE was to develop digital evaluation tools for Secondary schools to self-evaluate their academic and guidance program, to develop an academic and career guidance plan to tackle new challenges and offer an online training module for teachers and guidance practitioners and to support teachers in their role to support students, with digital tools and resources, in the unprecedented context that was generated by Covid-19. The digital TACKLE tools aimed to support schools in evaluating their services and work to assure that, despite the additional pressures on schools, they are prepared to tackle disadvantage and early school leaving. The project brought together a transnational partnership of organizations with expertise in academic and professional guidance, a public administration with competence over schools and educational policies and a technological partner. The partners combined their perspectives of guidance and to develop tools to tackle common, transnational issues that schools are facing, to fight against Early School Leaving, and also to assure that schools support their students' decision-making processes related to education and training pathways.
As a result of the Covid-19 crisis in Europe, the need for guidance services, monitoring and support in schools for students is even more urgent to maintain the advances in the reduction of Early School Leaving and to promote the successful transitions to different educational levels and/or to the labour market. According to a June 2020 study by the Bertelsmann Foundation, the challenges for guidance generated by the Covid-19 crisis and post context are: - to continue to offer support and follow-up with students and their families, - to digitalize guidance and increase access to guidance resources for all, & - the uncertainty of the overall situation is a justification of the need, now more than ever, for quality, structured and developed school guidance services. The TACKLE project responds by providing digital tools for schools to evaluate their guidance programs and services and gives them tools and training resources to create a plan of action and take the steps to improve and strengthen their guidance provision for students – with a focus on reducing early school leaving and improving successful educational transitions. The TACKLE tools support teachers and schools with digital guidance resources.