International conferences | Reducing Early School Leaving in Europe

ECER Conference, Porto, 2014

Panel : Education Policies Concerning Early School Leaving in European Countries: a considerable degree of convergence?

Chair/Discussant: Helena C Araújo/ Roger Dale

This panel at the 2014 ECER conference in Porto discussed the development and implementation of education policies and political instruments dealing with early school leaving in the aftermath of the Lisbon Strategy (2000) in 7 European Union member states (Belgium, United Kingdom, Portugal, Poland, Spain, Hungary, Austria). It builds on the project Reducing Early School Leaving in the EU (RESL.eu, financed by EU, 2013-2018), involving 9 European countries.

The convergence aimed at by the Lisbon Agenda (2000) has enhanced the European agenda in education. The coordination structures and processes are providing an educational and political grammar actually framing education reforms within the national contexts. The coordination mode is largely based on “the capacity of the EU to initiate and influence national discourses about educational issues” (Balzer and Martens, 2004: 7). This is about ‘thematic’ governance involving not only the content but also the means that provide materiality to the models and concepts to be disseminated. The grammar (Magalhães et al. 2013) of the legitimating discourses of the reforms shows a considerable degree of convergence, if not around a specific narrative at least in the concepts and jargon that both nationally and internationally are used to ‘talk’ about education. However, when comparing education policies across European countries, it becomes evident that their pace of implementation and their very nature (i.e. economic, social, educational) are diverse and far from converging.

This perspective might shed some light over the agenda setting at the European and national levels, as Ferlie and Andresani recognise: “few studies carefully reconstruct how such policies arrive on the agenda, the political entrepreneurs and the interest groups involved, the way the problems are defined and constructed, how solutions are developed and the narratives attached to them” (Ferlie, Musselin and Andresani 2009: 6). The role of the state concerning the definition, steering and implementation of policies and public action comes hand in hand with the increasing intervention of other entities and actors, reporting to different governing bodies located at different levels and thus interfering with policy-making processes (Barroso 2006).

The aim of the project is to formulate conceptual and methodological perspectives and models concerning the development and implementation of policies and specific measures to deal with ESL. The project’s main assumptions are that education and training are i) vital assets for the welfare of European citizens; ii) important tools in promoting equity, social cohesion and active citizenship, on the one hand; and in stimulating economic growth and the creation of new skills, competencies, on the other hand. Within the global social and economic dynamics, it is necessary to consider that ESL affects diverse groups of disadvantaged population in different countries and many young adults have possibly lesser possibilities to succeed in their education, training and labour insertion. How are the different countries dealing with this situation? This is the question to be addressed.

Building on a wider view of how the problem of ESL is shaped within the EU in the 9 member states participating in the project, the panel brought to the fore the policy drivers underpinning policy making induced by the European level and provided an understanding about the national similarities and specificities of the policies at stake. The 7 presentations focused on the interaction between EU agenda the national agendas dealing with ESL, identifying the workings of rescaling processes (Dale, 2007) and the renationalisation processes. They drew on content analysis of EU and national relevant documents, and interviews and focus group discussion with national and local stakeholders.

ECER Conference, Budapest 2015, Symposium 1

Symposium 1: Tacking Early School Leaving in Europe: a statiscal investigation of risk and protective factors

Chairs : Neil Kaye & Alessio D’Angelo, Middlesex University Discussant: Paul Downes, St. Patrick's College, Drumcondra, Dublin City University

Early School Leaving (ESL), as defined by the EU, refers to young people aged between 18 and 24, who have attained no higher than lower secondary education and who are not currently receiving any education or training. Inadequate qualifications and professional skills can have severe consequences for the young people involved, but are also associated with high societal and economic costs. Hence, the reduction of national levels of ESL has been identified as an important target in the European Union’s Lisbon Agenda (2000) and, more recently, in the ‘Education & Training 2020’ strategic framework.

The body of academic work discussing the causes of Early School Leaving and the categories of young people most at risk is substantial (e.g. Coleman, 1966; Bourdieu and Passeron 1977; Swadener and Lubeck 1995; Driessen 2001; Yuval-Davis 2010). Personal characteristics including socio-economic status or being non-native speakers, as well as individual inclinations and skills, are widely accepted as playing an important role. However these need to be placed and analysed within a broader context of social structures and interactions, including the family, the school, the local community and the ‘systemic’ level (e.g. Reay 2004; NESSE 2010; Lamb 2011). The complex interplay of all these dimensions affects not just the risk of ESL but, more generally, levels of school engagement, motivations, aspirations and life pathways.

This symposium offers an opportunity to present and discuss findings of a large-scale survey which, for the first time, has attempted to collect, analyse and compare large scale quantitative data across a number of different countries in order to systematically test and further explore some of the well-established theories about risk and protective factors in Early School Leaving.

The survey forms part of a wider project - ‘Reducing Early School Leaving in the EU’ (RESL.eu, www.resl-eu.org, financed by the EU commission FP7, 2013-2018) - which employs a mixed-methods longitudinal design to investigate the processes that influence a pupil’s decision to leave school or training early and to identify best practices to tackle ESL.

The first stage of quantitative data collection took place in the school year 2013/2014 and comprised a survey of more than 19,000 young people currently in schools or colleges in fourteen urban sites across Belgium, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom.

The survey captured a wide range of variables, including socio-economic characteristics, family background, education history, social networks, school environment and individual subjective perceptions. The data has then been aggregated through statistical modelling, with the development of a number of composite indicators of key underlying dimensions such as school engagement, aspirations, parental support and teacher support.

A follow-up of the survey will take place in the school year 2015/2016, adding a longitudinal dimension to the data-set and allowing the researchers to test hypotheses on the educational and work trajectories of the participants.

In relation to the first wave of the survey, the symposium presented and discussed: 1) the methodology and theoretical underpinning, with a discussion of the potential and limitations of large scale, cross-country quantitative surveys; 2) findings from the survey, including descriptive statistics and advanced statistical models, both at a national level and from an international comparative perspective; 3) a number of national case studies focusing on specific themes, such as protective factors, aspirations, the impact of the institutional context and of socio-economic environment and the role of cultural diversity.

This symposium also offered an opportunity to discuss the further development of quantitative-methods research on ESL, both at national and international level, as well as ways of integrating and triangulating this with the insights emerging from other research approaches.

ECER Conference, Budapest 2015, Symposium 2

Symposium 2 : Tackling Early School Leaving in Europe: an evaluation of school-based practices

Chair: Noel Clycq, CeMIS, University of Antwerp Discussant: Paolo Landri, CNR-IRPPS, University of Stirling

This symposium discusses different measures and policies that are implemented by schools to tackle early school leaving. It builds on the project Reducing Early School Leaving in the EU (RESL.eu, www.resl-eu.org, financed by the EU commission FP7, 2013-2018), involving 9 EU member states: Belgium, United Kingdom, The Netherlands, Portugal, Poland, Spain, Sweden, Austria and Hungary. The findings are based upon new empirical qualitative data collected and analyzed during the period September 2014 - May 2015.

Early school leaving (ESL) remains high on the EU policy agenda as the EU2020 target aims to reduce the ESL rate to less than 10%. Those youngsters categorized as ESL are defined as individuals leaving education before attaining their ISCED 3 level qualification of upper secondary education. While some member states have reached this target, large disparities remain between and within EU member states. Therefore, as the latest joint Eurydice and Cedefop Report (November, 2014) argues, it is important to bring the policy agreements from a few years ago back into the spotlight: In June 2011, education ministers agreed on a ‘framework for coherent, comprehensive, and evidence-based policies’ to tackle early leaving (Eurydice and Cedefop Report, 2014: 7). This symposium focuses primarily on the particularity of such evidence-based policies tackling ESL within schools.

As argued in several policy documents, policies often can be categorized on the level of prevention, intervention or compensation (TWG, 2013:18). While the first two can be situated before the event (of ESL) the latter is to be situated after the actual early school leaving. In this symposium we focus on prevention and intervention policies and measures designed and implemented within the school environment and targeting those students that are perceived at risk of ESL. Rather than listing specific (good) practices the Resl.eu project tries to evaluate and understand why specific projects and measures seem to work or not. To make this evaluation the project applies an adapted theory-driven stakeholder evaluation. This approach relies upon an analysis of (school) policy documents and qualitative data collection rather than on a pre- and post-evaluation of ongoing projects.

Based upon this twofold methodology, we try to understand why certain policies are designed and implemented and how they are perceived and experienced by those it targets. Based on the analysis of (school) policy documents and by doing interviews with school management staff, their implicit and explicit theories on why a specific measure or policy is designed, becomes comprehensible. By doing focus group discussions with other school staff (teaching and support staff members), and focus group discussions and face to face interviews with students, the Resl.eu-project tries to understand how these projects and measures are implemented by staff and how they are experienced by the target group of students (at risk of ESL). The assumption of this approach and evaluation is that the more the implicit and explicit theories about the causes of ESL and the measures/ policy needed to tackle ESL of the designers (management staff), implementers (teaching and support staff) and recipients (at risk students) are congruent and correspond, the better results measures can generate.

ECER Conference, Dublin, 2016

Symposium: Compensatory pathways for Early School Leavers: findings from the RESL.eu project

Chair: Lore Van Praag, CeMIS, University of Antwerp Discussant: Leah O’Toole en Paul Downes

Education gained an increased importance on the labour market in western societies (Bills, 2004). Over the last decades, industrial, technological and societal developments has led to a higher demand for a highly skilled labour force. Gradually, educational credentials became more widely valued on the labour market and more students entered (higher) education. Educational credentials became a necessary good to be able to function on the labour market. Nevertheless, educational inequalities in education systems throughout Europe remain to persist. One of the most salient symptoms of this is the phenomenon of Early School Leaving (ESL), the end-result of a process already starting early on in life, but also a phenomenon that to some extent transcends the level of the individual (Elffers 2011; Finn 1989). Many of these ESL do not find their ways in regular secondary education and decide to leave school without attaining an ISCED 3 level qualification. Due the increased importance of educational credentials on the labour market, ESL are particularly vulnerable on the labour market. To avoid this, in many European countries, concrete measures have been implemented within institutions outside of regular secondary education, that provide compensatory pathways for youngsters who have left regular secondary education without attaining an ISCED 3 level qualification and that directly or indirectly allow them to attain an ISCED 3 qualification. These compensatory measures have been designed to provide youngsters with additional training and educational qualifications to prepare them for the labour market. In this symposium, we want to apply a comparative approach to understand which compensatory measures can be identified as successful in reducing ESL, with a focus on keeping ‘a student at risk of ESL’ in school.

In the present symposium, we aim to provide an overview of the existing compensatory measures across 6 different European countries, namely UK, Portugal, Spain, Hungary, Belgium and Poland. All participants of the current symposium are part of the RESL.eu project (Reduction of Early School Leaving in Europe). Presenting the findings of the RESL.eu project together in one symposium enables us to compare the compensatory measures for ESL across Europe, as data collection procedures and sample are similar across the countries involved. Three compensatory pathways are included: i) second chance education, ii) vocational education and training, and iii) educational reintegration strategies, which are often organized by distinct types of institutions. Qualitative research methods, such as focus group discussions and interviews are used to grasp both students’ and school staff’s perspectives and to provide an integral approach to the study of compensatory measures for ESL.

The use of a European comparative approach for compensatory measures for ESL is interesting as it allows us to gain more insights in the strengths and weaknesses of each measure and include the institutional context. The success and failure of the compensatory measures for ESL and the (perceived) differences with regular secondary education will be discussed. Special attention will be given to their extent they appeal to children and youth at risk, the overrepresentation of particular vulnerable groups and how this varies across different types of compensatory measures for ESL.

References

Bills, D.B. (2004). The sociology of education and work. Malden: Blackwell Publishing.

Elffers, Louise. 2011. “The transition to post-secondary vocational education. Students’ entrance, experiences and attainment.” Dissertation, Universiteit van Amsterdam.

Finn, Jeremy D. 1989. “Withdrawing from school.” Review of Educational Research 59(2): 117-142.

ECER Conference Copenhagen, 2017

Symposium : “Early School-Leaving in the European Union: Comparative Perspectives”

Chairs: Christiane Timmerman and Silvia Carrasco Discussant: Margarita del Olmo Pintado

In this symposium, we will present the findings of a comparative, EU policy oriented research team, namely the RESL.eu project ‘Reducing Early School Leaving in Europe’. The main objectives of this research project are to make an in-depth comparison of all aspects of and processes that lead to early school leaving within seven European countries: Belgium (Flanders), the Netherlands, Portugal, United Kingdom, Spain, Poland and Sweden. The rationale behind the RESL.eu project, is our conviction that the high rate of early school leavers (ESL) in the EU is primarily a symptom of the traditional education systems difficulties to adapt to new realities of shifting global and local social and economic dynamics. In the processes leading to a student’s decision to leave school or training early, many relevant indicators of structural/systemic, institutional and individual failure to adapt to and overcome these social transformations need to be uncovered.

Due to the multi-level nature of this project and the complex nature of early school leaving, we aim to provide more insights into these mechanisms and processes; as well as into the decision of school leavers to enrol in alternative learning arenas unrelated to regular secondary schools, making use of a mixed-method design. The main focus is to discuss early school leaving in a broad sense and in particular to examine young people (15-24 years old) that were (previously) enrolled in a wide range of educational institutions in and outside mainstream secondary education. Doing so, attention will be paid to specific vulnerable groups (e.g., (second generation) immigrants, lower social classes, Roma groups) within these institutions. The RESL.eu project is also innovative in this sense that it simultaneously studies measures developed inside or outside formal schooling. The combination of both focuses enables us to identify the many risk and protective factors on the various levels and contexts influencing educational trajectories.

Funded by the European Union, the results of this research project are in the first place aimed to support EU policy makers to use the existing knowledge and experience across all countries to get a better understanding of the role national/regional educational systems play with regard to processes that could result in early school leaving. Apart from this policy-oriented start of this project, the comparative character of this research project brings forth unique data, both qualitative and quantitative, that contribute to the existing literature on this matter. At the end of this symposium, we will reflect upon the ways in which this clearly policy-oriented research has impacted educational research and how both policies and academia interplay with each other with regard to matters which are placed highly on the political agenda.