Page 18 - Štremfel, Urška, and Maša Vidmar (eds.). 2018. Early School Leaving: Training Perspectives. Ljubljana: Pedagoški inštitut.
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roaches are needed. Further, the European Commission (2011) recog-
nised that, while the factors leading to ESL vary from country to country,
the causes of ineffective policies can be boiled down to three typical issues:
a) the lack of a comprehensive strategy; b) the lack of evidence-based poli-
cy-making; and c) insufficient prevention and early intervention measures.
On that basis, the Education Council (2011) recommended the development
of a framework for coherent, comprehensive cross-sectoral strategies and
evidence-based policies against ESL so as to provide a range of school-wide
and systemic policies that target different factors leading to ESL.

The Education Council invited the European Commission to support
member states’ strategies through the exchange of experience and good
practices, and to facilitate effective peer learning, networking and experi-
mentation with innovative approaches to measures aimed at reducing ESL
and improving the educational outcomes of children and students from
groups at risk of ESL (Education Council, 2011). Member states are thus
supported in exploiting all opportunities of the common EU cooperation
in the field, taking advantage of the existing and developing new tool kits,
which will enable the EU as a whole to achieve the agreed target.

Taking the above EU initiatives into consideration, the TITA (Team
cooperation to fight early school leaving: Training, Innovative Tools and
Actions) project contributes to accomplishing the EU headline ESL target
by addressing one of the key policy messages identifying the critical con-
ditions for successful policies countering ESL (Thematic Working Group,
2013): to promote and support multi-professional teams in schools to ad-
dress ESL by building on evidence-based policies and practices.

TITA’s evidence-based approach to ESL
The TITA scientific base consists of three sections (European perspectives
of ESL, Cooperation perspectives of ESL,Training perspectives of ESL) pre-
sented in three interconnected monographs. It was prepared in line with
the European Commission’s (2007) understanding of evidence-based edu-
cation. The European Commission (ibid.) believes that such education en-
ables the member states and EU institutions to identify the most effective
education policies and practices, and allows for their effective implemen-
tation. Evidence-based education provides the foundations for modernis-
ing education systems. The improved use of knowledge that occurs as edu-
cation policies and practices are developed in turn improves the quality of
both the content of education policy and governance in the education field.

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