The Future of Education

ET 2020 objectives include a renewed target of reducing ESL to less than 10% by 2020. ESL may have a significant impact on personal and professional development as learners who do not complete upper secondary education, which is the definition that the EU adopts on ESL, may be exposed to reduced opportunities to pursue a satisfying career, to become fully active in society, and to fulfill their dreams.

While ESL causes may diverge from one community to another some key factors emerge as significant: socio-economic background, parental educational levels, attitudes towards education, parental interest in their children’s education, social exclusion particularly for migrants, poor understanding of school curricula especially for migrant parents, teacher skills in identifying ESL risk factors and effectively intervening, quality of communication between teachers, learners, and parents, parental capacity to effectively help children in homework, and more. Many of these factors are related to the extended supporting environment of learners and go beyond school curricula-related issues.

Past activities in the area of ESL may be broadly categorized as mitigation activities that aim to bring back to school drop-outs and prevention activities that aim to support individuals that have been identified as being at ESL risk through after school study, mentoring, individualized learning, and more.

The LINC project, which is funded with the support of the Comenius Action of the Life Long Learning Programme and runs from December 2013 to November 2015, adopts a different approach towards preventing ESL. Rather than working with individuals that are already at risk of ESL, LINC introduces early and continuous interventions that start in primary school and follow learners through lower secondary education aiming at preventing the risk of arising. A holistic, inclusive learning model and community building methodologies strengthen the supporting extended school environment of learners, help teachers become community leaders in managing activities on ESL prevention, and support parents in building confidence and being better equipped to help their children in learning and schooling. Special attention is paid to the needs of migrant learners and their families aiming at their effective integration into their adopted communities.

Specifically, LINC develops an analysis of factors affecting ESL in Greece, France, the Czech Republic, and Sweden, and generally in Europe; experiential, community-building learning approaches that support learners, parents, and teachers in connecting school to real life; on-line communities, joint parent-learner educational activities, good practice recommendations, teacher skill building content, and resource links targeting parents; strategies for the adoption of the proposed learning interventions into school structures. Activities will be validated in Greece, Sweden, France, and the Czech Republic.