Description
An inter-ministerial information system at the national level to identify and support early school leavers and a network of local “second chance” actors providing the support.
Beneficiaries
Young people aged between 16 and 30 years old.
Countries
Education level and sector
Vocational Education and Training (VET) (school-based and apprenticeship-based as well as general secondary education.
Type of policy/initiative
Intervention/Compensation
Level of implementation / Scope
- Local level
- Regional level
- National level
Aims of policy/initiative
The IEIS aims to identify early school leavers through cross-referencing of databases of the Ministry for Education and its partners at the national level (in the area of agriculture and labour).
The PSAD is a network of actors at the local level (guidance and infromation one-stop-shops, new chance schools, apprentice centers). The PSAD aims to monitor and support early school leavers until they go back to school or find employment. There are 383 Platforms that offer coordinated and tailored support to young people.
Features and types of activities implemented
A list of early school leavers is prepared twice a year by the IEIS and is used by the members of the Platforms to reach-out to young people to offer them support. The information about each pupil is integrated in the RIO SUIVI application used by PSAD members. The application:
- allows to contact each early school leaver on the list and to offer them support,
- facilitates cooperation between local partners, coordinated by regional authorities
- contributes to the reducing of the early school leaving rate that was 8.8% in 2017.
Since spring 2018, the data exchange has been implemented between the RIO SUIVI application and I-MILO, the application used by Local Youth Centres ("missions locales“) in charge of integrating young people into employment. This allows to share monitoring information about early school leavers between the relevant actors and to improve the effectiveness of remediation actions.
Resources
Human resources dedicated to the implementation of the initiative:
- National level (IEIS): around 3 FTE in twice a year for 6 weeks (in total 3 months a year),
- Platform/ Local level: 383 FTE during 2 months a year (around 1 FTE per platform).
The Ministry of Education dedicated the resources from the beginning. In 2016, in some platforms, EU funding (Youth Employment Initiative (YEI)) was used to cover expenses for platform assistants (around EUR 10 million for around 40 platform assistants).
Evaluation of the measure
A study conducted in June 2018 by IS Consultants (not publicly available) showed that IEIS, despite its indisputable contribution to ESL policy, had some weaknesses: a lack of flexibility (difficulty to add new data sources), time consuming and long proccess (twice a year campaigns of 6 weeks each). To overcome these shortcomings a new model was proposed, with the purpose of identifying early school leavers day-to-day basis. The feasibility of this proposal is still being assessed in particular its cost-effectiveness and impact on the IEIS architecture.
Evidence of effectiveness of the measure
Linking of databases and sharing of information with local partners helped reengage early leavers back to education and training. In 2015-2016, around 26,000 (out of 107,000) early school leavers came back to education, most of them in VET (Source: Direction de l’Evaluation, de la prospective et de la performance - DEPP, Ministry of Education).
Success factors
- An inter-ministerial coordination,
- A list of early school leavers produced through linking of databases of different institutions,
- Gradual widening of the types of early school leavers identified (planned expansion to apprentices, young people identified by the Ministry of Defense).
