Page 81 - Guiding-at-risk-youth-through-learning-to-work-Lessons-from-across-Europe

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

Although responsibility may be formally allocated to certain bodies,
collaboration by key partners (authorities, employment services, support
agencies, education and training providers) helps to ensure that there is a
comprehensive network in place to monitor and offer support to young people at
risk. One of the key successes of the Irish Pathways tracking project, which
works with early school leavers aged between 15 and 20, is said to be the
positive links which have been built up with service providers, referrers, parents
and the young people.
New technology, in the form of electronic databases, is used to ensure
partner organisations have access to up-to-date information on young people at
risk, although this is dependent on the timely addition of updated information. For
instance, Danish guidance counsellors have reported that teachers in vocational
schools are sometimes slow to enter pupil details: on occasion an entry has
taken 20 days or longer to come through. This hinders the tracking, as guidance
counsellors are unaware they have dropped out. Similar problems have been
encountered in Italy, and the key stakeholders have chosen to resolve these
problems by creating closer cooperation with local schools.
In addition to working with partner organisations, Danish guidance
counsellors also aim to work closely with the young person’s parents, in particular
parents of foreign origin. Nationally, as part of the efforts of youth guidance
centres, meetings have been held with parents to inform them about the
education system and opportunities for young people in Denmark, and supporting
material has also been produced in seven different languages.
There is strong anecdotal evidence to demonstrate that tracking measures
have been effective in helping to tackle the problem of early school leaving,
providing the intervention takes place soon after a young person has dropped out
and they are supported in their journey back into learning or guided towards
alternative learning opportunities. However, few formal evaluations are available
to prove this finding, although authorities in countries like Denmark are
establishing more robust evaluation systems. Evaluations of the Irish Pathway
project nevertheless showed that this form of measure can offer an effective
solution for more than three quarters of beneficiaries. However, allocating legal
responsibility for tracking does not prevent differences in the quality of services
provided by municipalities and other partners. In many countries, including the
Nordic countries, municipalities have had responsibility for tracking but great
differences are apparent in the ways they have approached this obligation.

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