Abstract:

Efforts are being made by the Member States to improve VET offers and its attractiveness but the number of dropouts from education and training, including from initial VET (iVET) stills high and is a matter of concern as it has impacts on the overall EU economic development and on Europe’s progress.

Several EU countries are facing too many problems in implementing successful strategies to prevent this phenomenon as their dropout rates are well above of the EU-27 average, as such the case of Portugal (20,8%), Spain (26,5%), Italy (18,2%) and Malta (33,5%), according to statistics from 2012. Having in consideration the structural problems that huge levels of early leavers from education and training without any qualification can cause, the EU adopted in 2011 a Communication (Com 2011 18 from 31.1.2011) that aims at tackling early school leaving and contribute to the Europe 2020 Agenda.

The main focus is on the need of reducing the actual rates of earlier leavers to 10% by 2020 and by that way increase the contribution to Europe’s economic growth and competitiveness, one of the major objectives of the Union. Considerable efforts must be put into practice to reduce the active population low educational levels.

The In-VET project (www.invet-project.eu) aims at encouraging, inspiring and supporting VET professionals (including iVET Managers and Trainers) and Vocational Tutors/Counsellors to prevent trainees at risk of dropping out from the school system, while:
• Allowing them to develop skills to detect at an earlier stage trainees at risk of dropping out the VET system and implement suitable strategies to deal with this phenomenon in their daily training sessions;
• Enabling them to prevent the increase of early leavers rates and reduce current rates by designing “action plans” that generate higher attractiveness of iVET offers at their institutions.

Therefore, and during 24 months, In-VET will be actively working on three main results:
• Online-questionnaire, to identify young people at risk on time.
• Counselling guidelines for trainers, teachers, tutors, managers and similar professions in VET, to support young people at risk individually.
• Online-portal with training methods for trainers, teachers, tutors and managers in VET, to specifically work against dropout.

It is the belief of the partnership that In-VET will contribute to:
• Increased awareness towards the negative impacts of iVET earlier leavers high rates and the necessity of combating the phenomenon of earlier leavers and of promoting strategies to deal with it;
• Enhanced development of strategies, tools & resources addressed to iVET Managers, Trainers and Tutors/Counsellors that support their skills development, enabling them to detect at earlier stage trainees at risk of dropping out or of failure and implement in their daily training practices strategies to deal with potential dropouts.
• Promote the development of skills and networking opportunities among iVET Managers, Trainers and Tutors/Counsellors, improving their understanding of the phenomenon of early leavers and their competencies to develop “action plans” to promote higher attractiveness of iVET courses.

In detail, In-VET aims to impact positively the VET systems of the involved partner-countries by implementing a tailored methodology and by designing effective tools that ultimately contribute to the overall economic development by providing labour market with young adults qualified.

Keywords:

Dropouts, iVET, Teachers, iVET Managers, Tutors/Counsellors, Skills Developments, Labour Market, Early Leavers Rates.