Call for partners (secondary schools from EU countries)

“Non-Formal Education and Schools against dropout”.

This project aims to study the impact a common strategy led by NFE actors and formal ones could have on secondary school pupils at risk of dropping out (10-15 years old).
We’ll pursue three objectives:
- Improving personal representations of school
- Empowering pupils, encouraging their participation and responsibility
- Fostering a good “living together atmosphere” and combating discrimination

Each objective will be declined into concrete actions:
- Workshops on “self-esteem”; (tbc : workshops on “parenting”)
- “peer mediation” training for the educational community and pupils; youth projects; European mobility
- Workshops on “living together” (with a use of our previous European research-action “Educating for diversity”)

Those actions will target at-risk of dropping out pupils, identified as such by our partnering schools, but also the educational community as a whole: teachers, administrative staff, parents, pupils… They aim to reduce dropping-out rates by working on personal competences and by improving the general school atmosphere.

Our association wishes to have this project implemented at European level in order to adjust our techniques to other national realities and public policies, facilitating the dissemination of results, the durability of the shared practices and their turning into common policies.

We would like the strategic partnership to happen on a 36 months’ time frame.

The 1st year is dedicated to understanding local realities (methods, criteria used to identify at-risk pupils, public policies, relations between non-formal education and formal actors). Three trainings on our three main objectives will be organised (hosted by the three represented countries alternately). Two participants by partner school will be attending each of them. Those trainings will also be a chance to exchange best practices and improve our tools. That way, we should be able to have a common/European protocol to implement the 2nd year.

By spring of 2017, the educational community of each partner school will be trained and the concrete experimentation can start as soon as September, 2017. The next two months will be a time for identifying potential dropping-out pupils. Those pupils will then join our “self-esteem”, “youth projects”, and European mobility activities. Meanwhile schools will organize the global activities: peer mediation, (parenting), and “living together”.

A first assessment should happen by March, 2018, and modifications should be made to the common protocol if necessary. 

In April-May, 2018, the youth project written by the pupils at-risk of dropping out should be implemented, including a European mobility. Afterward, our youth workers should help them identify their newly acquired competences and write them down in a “youthpass certificate”.

End of June 2018, our experimentation is over and our partner university work on analysing the collected data.

November-December 2018: Dissemination conference and publications presenting our results.

If you’re a secondary school from one of the 28 European Union countries, please contact us as soon as possible, and before the 3rd of March, 2015.