Page 31 - Guiding-at-risk-youth-through-learning-to-work-Lessons-from-across-Europe

Guiding at-risk youth through learning to work
Lessons from across Europe

Young people from the Roma and traveller communities have been identified
as at-risk groups in numerous study countries. Drop-out rates are high among
Roma students for example in the Czech Republic, Latvia, Hungary and
Romania, where members of this community often live in socially and
economically deprived areas. For example, children from poor families in
Hungary face serious barriers to enrolment that originate from the selective
education system, in which schools are encouraged to favour children from
higher socioeconomic backgrounds (Szira and Nemeth, 2007). There is also a
tendency to place children from disadvantaged backgrounds, Roma children in
particular, in special education institutions. Segregated education is often
characterised by low expectations and many teachers are not sufficiently trained
to work in heterogeneous multicultural classes (ibid.).
Young people from travelling families regularly feature among early school
leavers in Ireland. This small community, which represents little more than 1 % of
the school-age population, accounts for one in six of all unqualified early school
leavers in the country. A range of complex factors leads young people from
travelling families to drop out from education: lifestyle, cultural, economic and
social reasons. A key factor is the perception among the adult traveller
community, particularly with regards to young adult males, that they should be
earning an income rather than participating in formal learning (WRC Social and
Economic Consultants, 2007).
There appears to be a noteworthy geographical dimension to the problem
too (Nevala, 2008). In most European countries, early school leaving is an issue
for inner city areas. In France, for example, urban areas with high levels of
unemployment and poverty are more likely to have high numbers of drop-outs
than other parts of the country. Young people in Austrian towns and cities are
twice as likely to drop out early as those in rural regions, with drop-out rates
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standing at 12 % and 5 % respectively ( ).
In contrast, young people living in remote rural areas of Romania have lower
school completion rates than their peers living in cities. A national study
concluded that, at the end of 2006 almost 20 % of pupils in lower secondary
schools in rural areas were registered as drop-outs in comparison to only 5.5 %
in urban areas (Ministry of Education, Research and Youth, 2008). This trend is
also pertinent to small, isolated villages in Hungary.

education system. This is particularly relevant for countries which have seen a more recent
influx of immigrants from outside the EU, such as Spain.
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( ) Based on information provided by the Federal Ministry for Education, the Arts and Culture
(BMUK) in April 2008.

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