How can we reduce early school leaving?

Today is more than important to work on factors that can help preventing and managing Early School Leaving and conflicts. This is the aim of this training course which topic is every day more and more crucial even if there are no easy answers. With a holistic approach in mind, during the course the participants learned how to identify the causes of this phenomenon and the best approaches and strategies to prevent, tackle and reduce it as well as the keys to conflict management.

The new edition of the course “Preventing conflicts and tackling Early School Leaving​” took place in Palermo from 23/02/2025 to 01/03/2025. The participants came from all across Europe, with Lauri from Ammattiopisto Live in Finland, Marleen and Kaya from Förderzentrum am Göteborgring and Wolfgang from reis Soest in Germany, Vera, Marette and Rick from Hogeschool Inholland and Claudia from Hout- en Meubileringscollege in the Netherlands.

Early school leaving is a widespread problem across Europe and being in a European context, participants delved into the different perspectives of countries but also at the national level. To kick off with the course, they focused on the definition of Early School Leaving and the identification of the main risk factors. This allowed the participants to draw and share a realistic picture of their school experience with Early School Leaving, starting from the underlying causes, and finishing with the potential consequences.

We started from the assumption that in order to develop an early school leaving approach, teachers need to connect with students, since being closer to their interests and their feelings its crucial. The participants engaged in hands-on activities to learn about the importance of active listening and emotional intelligence in creating social connection.
Conflict management was another important topic during the course. First, we dedicated some time for a change of perspective. With the support of an inspirational TED Talk, the group who initially associated the idea of conflict to something essentially negative, realized afterwards how conflicts provided in their life unique opportunities to improve their relationship, communication and understanding.

Afterwards, the group practiced different activities to reflect the importance of membership and collaboration and strategies for collaborative work and peer-education were analysed, following a non-formal methodology.
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Participants also had the chance learn how to give and receive feedback, through practical activities to explore the different types of feedback and their effect in not only students but in colleagues. In fact, role play activities were carried out to explore how students react to feedback. Moreover, the participants engaged in a team challenge that allowed them to learn how to foster a mindset of growth in our students.

Finally, “transformation” has been the key word of this course, since we learned how to change perspective on conflicts, to give and receive feedback, to change our mindset from fixed to growth and to transform from a group into a team.
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Discover more about this course here.