Page 17 - Štremfel, Urška, and Maša Vidmar (eds.). 2018. Early School Leaving: Training Perspectives. Ljubljana: Pedagoški inštitut.
P. 17
1.1 Team Cooperation to Fight Early School
Leaving: Training, Innovative Tools
and Actions
Urška Štremfel and Maša Vidmar
Early school leaving (ESL) in the European Union (EU) is recognised as
an urgent and serious problem for individuals and society as a whole. It rep-
resents the waste of both individual life opportunities and social and eco-
nomic potential (European Parliament, 2011). In this context, reducing ESL
is essential for achieving several key objectives of the Europe 2020 strategy.
Decreasing it addresses the ‘smart growth’ aims by improving education
and training levels as well as the ‘inclusive growth’ aims by targeting one of
the biggest risk factors in unemployment, poverty and social exclusion. The
Europe 2020 strategy therefore includes the headline target to bring the
share of early school leavers (ESLers) (persons aged between 18 and 24 who
leave education and training with only lower secondary education or less,
and who are no longer in education and training) below 10% by 2020, from
14.4% in 2009. That EU 2020 headline target was also acknowledged as one
of the five priority areas of the strategic framework for European coopera-
tion on education and training (ET 2020).
Although considerable effort to tackle ESL at the levels of the EU and
member states has already been made (not only in the ET 2020 frame-
work, but also of its predecessor ET 2010), the 2012 Joint Report of the
Council and the Commission on the implementation of ET 2020 noted
that the EU is not on track to meeting the headline ESL target by 2020. The
Education Council (2011) confirmed that all of the efforts so far to address
ESL have not been effective and efficient enough and that further and new
17
Leaving: Training, Innovative Tools
and Actions
Urška Štremfel and Maša Vidmar
Early school leaving (ESL) in the European Union (EU) is recognised as
an urgent and serious problem for individuals and society as a whole. It rep-
resents the waste of both individual life opportunities and social and eco-
nomic potential (European Parliament, 2011). In this context, reducing ESL
is essential for achieving several key objectives of the Europe 2020 strategy.
Decreasing it addresses the ‘smart growth’ aims by improving education
and training levels as well as the ‘inclusive growth’ aims by targeting one of
the biggest risk factors in unemployment, poverty and social exclusion. The
Europe 2020 strategy therefore includes the headline target to bring the
share of early school leavers (ESLers) (persons aged between 18 and 24 who
leave education and training with only lower secondary education or less,
and who are no longer in education and training) below 10% by 2020, from
14.4% in 2009. That EU 2020 headline target was also acknowledged as one
of the five priority areas of the strategic framework for European coopera-
tion on education and training (ET 2020).
Although considerable effort to tackle ESL at the levels of the EU and
member states has already been made (not only in the ET 2020 frame-
work, but also of its predecessor ET 2010), the 2012 Joint Report of the
Council and the Commission on the implementation of ET 2020 noted
that the EU is not on track to meeting the headline ESL target by 2020. The
Education Council (2011) confirmed that all of the efforts so far to address
ESL have not been effective and efficient enough and that further and new
17
