The final conference in the SCIREARLY project took place on 24 September in the European Parliament in Brussels. The three-year project, funded by the European Commission, explored the causes of early school leaving and ways to support learners to stay in school and achieve their full potential.
During the conference, speakers provided examples of efforts to reduce early school leaving from across Europe. These included targeted support to promote linguistic diversity in Poland and reintegrating learners in vocational education and training into secondary education in Malta. Different stakeholders, including school representatives, learners and representatives from minority groups, such as Roma, also provided their perspectives on how to raise learners’ achievements.
SCIREARLY project representatives presented the project’s findings. These include four evidence-based principles to support learners throughout their education, which reflect EASNIE’s key principles:
- the importance of education and well-being and removing barriers to learning;
- the need to build strong relationships between schools, families and communities;
- the importance of early childhood education;
- the need to recognise different educational pathways.
One of the project’s outputs is a toolkit for teachers and school leaders. Developed through real-life case studies from European schools, the toolkit contains practical strategies to promote academic achievement and foster social and emotional development in classrooms. It includes three modules: ‘Strengthening student-teacher relationships’, ‘Student-peer relations and co-regulation’ and ‘Building effective school-home collaboration – skills for teachers’.
Find out more about the project, the conference and the toolkit on the SCIREARLY project website.