Quality education is at the heart of EU policies, and it has contributed to build EU resilience against crises. This makes schools critical environments and education personnel key to tackle challenges as early school leaving and inclusive education.

This course will foster reflection around underachievement at school and inclusive education by focusing on national and local experience. Participants will be asked to analyse their own educational settings, working conditions and students’ characteristics in order to determine whether they are tackling those challenges in an effective way. They will be asked to share good practices that might be usefully translated in other national systems. There will be of course some discussion about teacher agency and teaching freedom as a preliminary condition to provide quality education, as well as to establish a fruitful collaboration with other stakeholders. 

As early school leaving cannot be seen as a phenomenon regarding only the final years of compulsory education, this course aims to raise awareness about the importance of setting up the right conditions for a lifelong learning process which starts with quality early childhood education. However, we will mainly focus on the lower and upper secondary level (students aged 13-16 years). 

Participants will receive information about ongoing European and international initiatives focusing on the impact of ECEC on compulsory school outcomes and will be able to compare their national experiences in this domain. At the end of the course, participants will have hopefully acquired a clearer understanding of what kind of contribution they can offer to reduce underachievement and early school leaving in their own schools. 

The course will start on 26 September and conclude on 12 October 2022. The estimated workload is 4-5 hours per week.

Duration and workload