Regional conference | ERI SEE

Stay@School

The Challenges We Face - Early School Leaving and Drop Out in SEE

Early school leaving (ESL) and dropping out of school are complex social phenomena which require multi-level interventions and cross-sectoral cooperation. Efficient combating ESL and drop out can enhance economic growth, employment and social development. As such, it stands for one of the greatest educational challenges in the region, and reducing ESL and drop-out is a shared objective of SEE countries.

Also, the South East Europe 2020 Strategy (currently in the process of development under the Regional Cooperation Council auspices) within its Education and Competences component (coordinated by ERI SEE), recognizes reducing ESL and drop out as one of the main objectives, while key strategy actions include implementation of measures that will improve completion rates at all levels of education. In the same time, respective challenges are in the focus of many national strategies of the SEE countries.

Although many SEE countries are addressing the early school leaving and drop out issues more or less efficiently implementing different prevention policies and measures (such as early warning systems, early childhood development programmes, language support, desegregation policies, social and health security policies, affirmative actions and inclusion policies regarding enrollment procedures), intervention policies and measures (that are mainly concerned with gathering and finding children who abandoned schools through municipal, social and other outreach programs in order to reintegrate them into education system) and compensation policies and measures (that usually tend to enroll adults without formal education qualification into programs who strive to give them second chance to acquire knowledge and skills needed for labour market and to provide social inclusion for them on that way) there is still room for improvement and for setting systematic mechanisms towards providing high-quality education for all.

Bearing in mind the importance of the issues to be addressed, this conference aims to support the process of mutual learning and exchange of national experiences and good practices and to provide overview on the current states and developments in these topics in the SEE countries, as well as on the EU level. By bringing a regional and EU perspective, the conference will provide the opportunity to be acquainted with the similarities and differences in the approaches applied in different countries.

The main objectives of the conference are:

• to look into the current 'state-of-play' in different countries with regard to ESL and drop out – facts and figures
• to address key challenges and possible solutions
• to facilitate peer-learning among countries on successful models towards combating early school leaving and drop out
• to discuss on different policy approaches for addressing the early school leaving and drop out issues
• to exchange the information on governmental/local policies/initiatives and measures respond to the identified state of play as well as on projects and initiatives implemented

The conference aims to discuss these topics from various viewpoints bringing together policy makers, research community, representatives from the state institutions in charge of education development, and statistics as well as schools’ representatives from ERI SEE member countries.

The event will be organised by the Centre for Education Policy acting as the interim Secretariat of ERI SEE.

• Agenda and presentations
• List of participants
• Report