Keep those kids in school

Clare Education Centre has recently become involved in the STAYON European Union-supported educational initiative. Last week, partners from Norway, Sweden, Greece and the UK attended a three-day meeting in Clare to progress the project.

Clare Education Centre has worked closely with local schools and the Ennis School Completion team in order to look at the issue of school dropout in a European context. The event was co-ordinated by Clare Education Centre and former director Dr Kyran Kennedy chaired the sessions.

The project uses quantitative and qualitative methods to investigate and develop in an innovatively trans-European context means of meeting the “completion challenge” in vocational education for 16 to 19 year olds.

“We define this challenge as the urgent social and economic necessity to reduce drop-out rates and ensure young people’s completion of courses leading to transferable qualifications in ‘New Skills for New Jobs’.

We explore, develop and evaluate practical means of meeting this challenge on the ground, asking, What works, where and why?’ within a variety of socio-economic, cultural and educational contexts and regions in five European countries. The STAYON project gives a particular emphasis to (a) working in partnership with local employers and  (b) reducing early leaving for students from a variety of backgrounds,” explained the director of Clare Education Centre, Pat Hanrahan.

Major outputs include a range of innovative products including resource packs, which update cumulatively the partners’ initial reports on the state of the art in their own counties; demonstration of best practice including DVD presentations and documentary analysis and reports for academic and professional publications feeding into regional and national policy communities; an international conference on meeting the Completion Challenge in new skills areas; an EU-fundable training course for immediate target groups of teachers, school and college leaders, educational advisors, business-education link workers, and the members of local and national VET policy communities; a sustainable web-site as the basis for dissemination and exploitation of the project’s outputs across the whole European area.

Mr Pat Hanrahan, welcomed the news that an Education Conference is scheduled for Clare in 2014, in order to assist with the dissemination of the learning from the project. All schools and interested groups will be invited to attend and participate.