Reducing early school leaving to less than 10% across EU Member States by 2020 is one of the EU’s priorities in the field of education. The Commission is working with Member States to implement comprehensive strategies to prevent early school leaving and to engage early school leavers in education and training. The EDDI Project consortium members came together to develop early diagnosis methods for Early School Leaving and to support these methods with digital ICT opportunities. Currently the partners are working on the content development for the EDDI Platform.

Platform Content Development

After the feasibility study carried out in the project partner countries, the factors causing early school leaving were determined and effective strategies were determined. Currently the partners are developing content for the EDDI Platform. Four modules, each with 4 units are currently being developed:

Module 1: Failure in Classes

Module 2: Domestic violence, conflict and inadquate support for students…

Module 3: Inadequacy of social activities

Module 4: Uncontrolled absenteeisme

What’s the Problem?

Early school leaving is linked to unemployment, social exclusion, poverty and poor health. There are many reasons why some young people give up education and training prematurely: personal or family problems, learning difficulties, or a fragile socio-economic situation. The way the education system is set up, school climate and teacher-pupil relations
are also important factors. Since there are often complex, interconnected reasons for the students not completing secondary schooling, policies to reduce early school leaving must address a range of issues and combine education and social policy, youth work and health-related aspects. Some of these challenges are outlined in several studies provided by the Commission.

What has been done so far?

• Setting Up the EDDI Project by project partners: The EDDI project brings together innovative methods, digital interventions and pedagogies that are looking to identify and to address the reasons for early school leaving, and proposes approaches to early ESL diagnosis, prevention and intervention. The project will develop a digital EDDI e-platform, an EDDI Guidebook and an EDDI Android Application.
• EU countries have committed themselves to reducing the average share of early school leavers to less than 10% by 2020. The annual Education and Training Monitor provides data and analysis of early school leaving trends in the EU and in all the Member States.
• EU education ministers adopted a Council Recommendation on policies to reduce early school leaving, which set out a framework for coherent, comprehensive, and evidence-based policies. They agreed to collaborate to exchange best-practices and knowledge on effective ways to address early school leaving
• A working group on early school leaving looked at examples of good practices in Europe and exchanged experiences in reducing early school leaving. The final report outlines 12 key messages for policymakers and translates them into practical tools through a checklist of comprehensive policies and an annex with examples of best practices from several EU countries.
• The Commission organised a conference on policies to reduce early school leaving. One year later, policy developments in eight EU countries were reviewed.
• The Working Group on Schools Policy created a set of policy messages identifying key conditions for implementing a whole school approach to tackling early school leaving, as well as an online European Toolkit for Schools.
• The Council has also adopted Conclusions on reducing early school leaving and promoting success in school.