InSchool - Early School Leaving - Contributions from Portugal

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WORKING TOGETHER TO REDUCE EARLY SCHOOL LEAVING

5 COUNTRIES, 2 YEARS, 1 AIM

EARLY SCHOOL LEAVING – CONTRIBUTIONS FROM PORTUGAL

June 2015

Anabela MesquitaPaulino SilvaDiana Vieira

Anabela Mesquita, Paulino Silva, Diana Vieira 2

Agenda

• Early school leaving – Introduction• Early school leaving in Portugal• InSchool Project• Measures against ESL• Good practices identified in Portugal• @ ISCAP – good practiced exported and imported• Evaluation of good practice imported• Future


Early school leaving - IntroductionSerious matter at the individual and at a macro level since it is connected to unemployment, social exclusion, and poverty while impeding productivity and competitiveness.

Shrinking workforce - Europe needs to make full use of its human resources. Young people who leave education and training prematurely are bound to lack skills and qualifications, and to face serious, persistent problems on the labour market.

2012 - nearly five and a half million young people (18 and 24) had not finished upper secondary education and were not in education and training. Unemployment rate of these leavers is 40.1%, compared to 23.2% overall youth unemployment in Europe


Early school leaving - IntroductionThere 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 and the environment of each school are also important factors.

project InSchool – Innovation in Early School Leaving was developed

There is not a single reason for ESL, there are no easy answers. Policies to reduce early school leaving must address a range of triggers and combine education and social policy, youth work and health related aspects such as drug use or mental and emotional problems


Early School Leaving in Portugal• Although the tendency for the indicator of early school leavers to

decrease in all European countries in the last 20 years, during this period Portugal has presented average values above those of the EU.

• Southern countries, like Spain, Turkey and Portugal, present the higher figures for this indicator.

• Countries with lower rates (between 4% and 9%) are Finland (8,9%), Holland (8,8%), Luxembourg (8,1%), Austria (7,6%), Sweden (7,5%), Lithuania (6,5%), Poland (5,7%), Czech Republic (5,5%), Slovakia (5,3%) and Slovenia (4,4%).

• Spain (24,9%), Malta (22,6%) and Portugal (20,8%) are those with the highest values, showing more difficulties concerning the inclusion of a young population in basic education.

• The average figure for Europe (27 countries) was 12,8% in 2012


InSchool ProjectInnovation in Early School Leaving


• Aims to • share best practices within the partnership, • to produce best practice manual, • to enable partners to observe the application of best practices

through benchmarking, • to involve stakeholders and • to enable all partners to import and apply at least one innovative

aspect of best practice. Outcomes are / were

* 5 workshops held in each of the partner countries, * a good practices guide, * a website and* the identification of aspects of best practice that would be

imported to each partner organization.


• Partner• UK (Bury College) (Coordinator), • Romania (IPA, SA S.C.), • Portugal (ISCAP / IPP), • Italy (E.RI.FO.) and • Turkey (Nahit Mentese Girls Technical and Vocational High School)

• Started in October 2013 and will end in September 2015. • Activities

• An analysis of the situation of ESL in each partner country was carried out.

• Identification of a set of good practices already taking place in partner countries.

• Each partner selected at least one of these good practices and implemented it in their own organization.


Measures against ESL


Measures against ESL addressed in the report from the European Commission (2013) (http://ec.europa.eu/education/policy/strategic-framework/doc/esl-group-report_en.pdf)

http://ec.europa.eu/education/policy/strategic-framework/doc/esl-group-report_en.pdf

http://ec.europa.eu/education/policy/strategic-framework/doc/esl-group-report_en.pdf


Smooth transition between educational levelsTransition between educational levels is critical for students - a time when they move from often smaller and more supportive schools to larger schools, where the academic and social demands are higher.

The cost of failing is high. Unsuccessful school transitions contribute to high dropout rates, low on-time graduation rates and low achievement.

Through a questionnaire administered to all secondary and VET schools in Porto region, we identified some good practices. Present some results in next slide

Then we present the good practice exported and the one imported

Necessary to provide tools and support to smooth this transition.


Good practices identified in schools• Education offered by study area and not by course, at the

beginning of the 10th grade - allows student to try the possible available areas before committing to just one.

• A systematic accompaniment of students by coordinators of the different courses which integrate each study area as well as by the direction board and office of vocational guidance and counselling with the objective to understand the best way to follow at the end of the 10th grade.

• Promotion of the proximity between student and teacher. Teacher is seen as a tutor that supports and accompanies the student.


@ ISCAPExported and Imported measures


Exported


Self-efficacy

• People's beliefs about their capabilities to produce designated levels of performance

• This concept is useful to predict human performance in several areas, although its predictive power is enhanced when specific measures of each domain of human functioning are used.

• Additionally, as self-efficacy is a judgment of personal capability, it is not considerate a trait and it can change over time.


Self-efficacy

• Studies show that students’ self-efficacy is related to academic achievement and/or dropout, both internationally (e.g. Bandura, 2006; Brown, Tramayne, Hoxha, Telander, Fan & Lent, 2008; Pajares, 2007) as well as in Portugal (e.g. Vieira & Polydoro, 2009; Vieira 2010).

• The student self-efficacy questionnaire was validated to Portuguese context (Vieira, Polydoro, & Coimbra, 2009; Vieira, Caires & Polydoro, 2011) and it is composed of 20 items.

• This measure is useful to rapidly screening student’s self-efficacy, though, facilitating the identification of the students at risk of poor academic performance and/or ESL.

• The administration of this questionnaire at the beginning of the academic year allows the identification of students with lower self-efficacy and the prevention of poor academic performance and/or ESL by the implementation of activities aimed to enhance students self-efficacy based on its sources.


Imported


Smooth transition between educational levels

Bury College already had experience in this area and had developed a website to deal with this situation - http://bethebest.burycollege.ac.uk/

Portugal – ISCAP (higher education) - decided to import and adapt this good practice

http://bethebest.burycollege.ac.uk/

http://bethebest.burycollege.ac.uk/


LIVE THE BEST @ ISCAP


Participants

Inschool Project Team (Anabela, Diana and Paulino)A Web Solutions Company (Bynet)

ISCAP Students UnionComissions of students from each degree Other ISCAP students


Structure of the website


BE INVOLVED

ENVOLVE-TE

Academic life

AB Mesquita


BE HERE

APARECE

Logistics of the schoolEg. Canteen, libray, etc.


BE ON BOARD

ENTRA A BORDO

Location and how to get there


BE PREPARED

PREPARA-TE

Services available and their timetable


BE SUPPORTED

APOIA-TE

Support on how to study


Website - http://www.livethebestatiscap.com/

http://www.livethebestatiscap.com/




Evaluation of the website - Results


Evaluation of the website

Developed a survey. Questions based on literature review

Received 43 responsesStudents graded this website with 8 / 10. The majority graded it between 7 and 10.


STRENGTHS WEAKNESSES

Website very dynamic and attractive Video tour only for one master (want to see videos of other courses)

Links provided are usefulThe list of resources is not complete

Excellent structure of menus and buttonsImages with quality

There are also some functionalities that the site does not have and respondents would like to find them there (but didn’t say what were those functionalities)

Information is concise, important and relevant

Involvement of different stakeholders – teachers, students, students’ union

AccessibleNeed to disseminate the existence of the siteTexts are easy to read, graphs and

animation are used in an adequate way

The site meets students’ needs One respondent said that the website has too much information on some issues and scarce on othersThe content of the site is useful


Suggestions for improvementAdd practical informations such as:

How to acquire the card to enter the parking

Create a FAQ sectionAccess to important documents

Ex. Form to ask the bus pass sub23


Future

Disseminate its existence – facebook, teachers, students

Continuously improve the website

Compare resuls with those of the Bury colleage (concerning the website). Identify differences and similarities.

In 6 months -re-evaluate its impact in early school leaving




THANK YOU

Comments? Questions?

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