The EDDI (Early Digital Diagnosis and Intervention) project aims to help teachers, families and students to better understand the causes and consequences of leaving education early. In turn this will help find possible solutions to the problem of Early School Leaving (ESL). Currently we are building a catologue with policy documents and good practices on Early School Leaving (ESL), a platform and an App.

Dutch Catologue on ESL

One of the articles which will be in the EDDI Catologue is the one about the significant reduction of Dutch Dropouts in VET: The number of students having successfully finished their VET course has risen to almost 84%, concluded the Inspectorate of Education in its 2019 report on the State of Education in the Netherlands. What more can be done to reduce the share of drop-outs even further, now since more than a decade a great number of policy instruments has already been applied?

In search of innovative methods the Ministry of Education allowed VET schools to experiment with homemade interventions. Subsidies were granted to three VET-schools under the condition of participating in an evaluation of the effectiveness of the instrument of choice. One VET school improved the intake procedure for prospective students under the assumption that the risk of dropout will be reduced by a careful match between the student’s expectations and competences and a study program. Another VET school introduced stricter policies in the event of a student’s unauthorized absence, as absence often precedes early school leaving. And the third encouraged parental involvement in the education of their children through the use of e-coaching for parents.

The aim of the EDDI Project is to prevent ESL in the partner countires and in the EU as a whole.

Objectives of the EDDI Project

The objectives of the EDDI Project are:

• Provide practical ideas and new strategies for classroom interventions
• Raise students’ motivation to learn
• Improve competences linked to the teachers’ professional profiles
• Provide teachers with a resource of ready- to-use materials to prevent ESL
• Involve students, families, health and social agencies
• Improve students’ and teachers’ knowledge and competences in English and ICT
• Promote social integration at school

EDDI Platform & App

One of the main outcomes of the project is the EDDI platform, which will provide an online space for teachers to develop a wide European network for institutions, teachers, trainers, students and parents to
share and exchange tips and suggestions in regards to fighting ESL. The EDDI app will be complimentary to the platform.

In line with the European Commission goals ( ETAT2020, EC 2018) to reduce the early education leavers statistics, the project “Early Digital Diagnosis and Intervention(EDDI)” aims to improve student retention rates. Today we officially kicked off EDDI by a digital Teams meeting.

Zoom Kick Off 20 January 2021

on January 20th we officially kicked off EDDI through Teams. The project is coordinated by the Aston University (UK). Other partners are from Greece (2), Turkey, Netherlands and French Polynesia.

The problem of early school leaving (ESL) affects societies, economies and higher education as underscored by UNESCO, Sustainable Development Goals (2019). With schools struggling with a significant number of students who give up on education before finishing secondary school, the aim of the EDDI consortium is to find a way to keep students in education.

Aims

The EDDI project aims to help teachers, families and students to better understand the causality and consequences of leaving education in order to find possible solutions to the Early School Leaving (ESL) problem. We believe that only a comparative analysis of practices and interventions between countries which do well in the ESL statistics and those at the opposite end of the spectrum would deliver a sustainable solution to the ESL problem. Besides economic and social mobility impacts, ESL has been linked to bullying, violence or micro criminality. ESL is a threat to the successful future development of the workforce and community prospects. In preparation to the project proposal, the literature review showed that the drivers to the ESL vary and can be countered by engaging a number of supporting stakeholder groups.

Target groups

This project is the first step toward developing a clear, holistic community-wide action plan providing early diagnostics to the ESL problem. The students involved in the project are 14-18 years old and they will work in mixed international groups. The target groups addressed are teachers working with and students who have the risk to leave the school during the school year for different reasons and students showing signs of risk. The target group will include students from socially and economically disadvantaged backgrounds forming a representative sample of 300 in total from 5 different countries. The support of with the support of local social agencies, educational authorities and ICT solution partners has been secured ahead of the EDDI commencement.