VET in Europe – Policies addressing early leaving from education and training

Conditions for policy learning and mainstreaming measures tackling early leaving

Cedefop has identified five key conditions in measures and policies that have proved to be successful. The policy messages linked to each of these (highlighted in green below) were discussed with Member States representatives.

Leadership and commitment over time

A high level of commitment by policy makers is crucial to ensuring sustainability of good practices over time. All successful examples of mainstreaming analysed by Cedefop are characterised by a thorough evaluation of existing measures and prompt adoption of their innovative features, subsequent upscaling and financial and political support over time.

•   The Local action for youth programme was launched by the Luxembourgish Ministry of Education in 1984 as a pilot project and extended to the whole country in 1988. Today, its large network of field offices provides comprehensive guidance, training and personal support to young people to help them enter the labour market.
•   The vocational orientation programme (Berufs- orientierungsprogramm) in Germany started as a pilot project in 2008 and was mainstreamed following evaluation in 2010. Since then, the programme has reached 815000 pupils and created partnerships with 3 275 schools. Today, the project is part of the Educational chains initiative which accompanies youngsters from school through vocational training to their first job)..
•   In France, the first second-chance school E2C opened in 1997, as part of an EU pilot project, in the City of Marseille. Other pioneer E2C schools soon followed (in 2000 in Mulhouse, in 2002 in Champagne-Ardenne and Seine-Saint Denis). Today, second-chance schools operate at 107 sites in 18 regions across France. The number of young people supported increased from 1 000 in 2003 to 15 000 in 2015.One of the lessons learned is that it takes time for local innovative initiatives to be evaluated, upscaled and eventually turned into larger scale programmes or policies supporting young people at risk. Long-term support secures the commitment of staff working on the ground and allows them to develop their working methods as they gather experience.

Chosen excerpts by Job Market Monitor. Read the whole story at  Briefing note – Mainstreaming VET policies addressing early leaving from education and training | Cedefop