Abstract:

In Italy, repeating a year is still a practice that is used as a remedy to the difficulties and gaps in school, despite the fact that in many European countries, a number of laws and regulations tend to limit this [1]. Taking into account the costs that entails this traditionalist view, (an increase of 8, 4% in cost for a child who has repeated one year in the three years of the secondary school level I [2)
The tendency to consider repeating a year (and the feeling of rejection accompanying this) as a remedy to the student's cognitive impairment is used in some countries in Europe where rates of repeating the schooling year are in order of 20%, with peaks up to 30%: (French-speaking Belgium, Spain, France , Luxembourg, Portugal)
Many studies have shown that the short comings of the students are not always of a cognitive nature, but also denote a socio-cultural and a socio-emotional period for the adolescent. This is not only due to differences in socio-economic environment of the students, as evidenced by the results of PISA 2009.
This rejected generation of “invisibles” is defined by Buzzi, Cavalli and de Lillo, (1997), Miscioscia, (1999) and the list of “invisibles” can be categorized as in the table by Morrow, Lecompte, Dworkin, Janosz, Blank, Bouleric, Trembley: the hunted, the dissatisfied, the capable drop-outs, the stop-out, the drop-outs, the turned-out.
Whatever category the student belongs to, the reasons for repeating a year are always attributed to the insufficient progress of learning, absenteeism or behaviour linked to particular family situations. For example, in Italy, absenteeism (justified or not) is, in itself, considered a criteria for repeating the year if school attendance is less than 75%.
Europe is developing a culturally innovative answer to this problem. The answer to the schooling difficulties of these students should be cultural, where prevention should be the norm and recovery the exception.

SOS students is a project of INDIRE (National Institute of Documentation and Educational Research) in collaboration with the Italian Ministry of Education (Ministry of Education and Research), which attempts to reduce the cultural gap and reduce rejection of students with learning deficiencies.
The project is funded by the European Union with funding by the NOP (National Operating Plan). The objectives of four regions (Calabria, Puglia, Sicily, Campagna) aims to recover the student and combat early drop out in secondary school.
In the framework of the European strategy for 2020, a 10% reduction of early school dropout is one of the five strategies. Early school dropout is a concern especially for Italy, which recorded a higher rate than the current European average of 10.30% to 10.50%.

SOS students is the only public platform that offers a free student support. SOS Students recently has been completely redesigned with the Google platform.
The test phase of the new platform is scheduled for early 2013, which will be made primarily in the four target regions and then be extended throughout the country by 2013.

Keywords:

e-learning- retention, dropout - student -italy -.