Preventing dropout through extracurricular activities

This project is founded on the specific need of each participating school to find effective and innovative tools and ways to tackle early school leaving, as all participating schools have similar percentages of pupils in risk of early school leaving (21% to 36%) due to economic factors, social factors or lack of interest for schools and education. All schools experienced the positive role of extracurricular activities in attracting and keeping pupils in schools, so the main objective of the project is related to the development of a general methodology of using extracurricular activities to reduce early school leaving. The objectives of the project are: reducing the number of children in risk of early school leaving with 2% in the implementation period; increasing the interest of pupils for school and education with 10%; maintaining 100% of the 180 pupils involved in the activities of the project in education until the end of the project; increasing with 10% the interest of teachers in organizing and implementing extracurricular activities in order to reduce early school leaving. Also, the project aims to increase of the interest and capacity of the schools in the partnership to implement future common international projects. The physical mobilities will involve 180 pupils (grades 5 to 8) and 36 teachers (both traveling and local participants) and the virtual mobilities will involve at least as many, so that the impact on each participating school will be enhanced. The physical mobilities will focus on extracurricular activities based on each partner expertise and each country current practices, contributing to early school leaving prevention: art, theatre, study trips and excursion, summer camps, educational games, sports, music, dance etc.Through those activities, pupils will gain knowledge about different educational systems, different cultures etc., will have direct access to international learning experiences and direct intercultural contact and communication, will develop their intercultural and linguistic skills and a more positive attitude towards education.Through the exchange of good practices, the teachers will have a better understanding of the diversity in education, culture, languages, teaching experiences etc., will develop their intercultural and linguistic skills and a more positive attitude towards continuous training and lifelong learning, but also will have a bigger interest in implicating in European projects. The participating schools will have an increased capacity to organize and manage international projects and work with school across Europe, but also an increased interest for European collaboration, including e-twinning projects and will enhance their capacity to work with the local community, parents, external experts in designing extracurricular activities to prevent early school leaving. The local community will of course benefit from the lower dropout rate and larger number of children and teenagers staying in school and getting their degree and will be more opened to tackling early school leaving and implicating in extracurricular activities. On medium and long term, the project will contribute, at its level, to the acknowledgment of the issues of early school leaving and the extracurricular activities as an efficient solution to tackle school dropout. After the project will end, the participating schools will continue the e-twinning virtual mobilities in order to further enhance the effects of the project and involve more and more pupils and teachers in those activities and, of course, each of the participating schools will continue to implement the extracurricular activities designed within this project at school level.