This project focuses on supporting student retention. According to the Education and Training report 2019, the number for “early school leaving” is 10.6% of the 18 to 24-year-olds in 2018 throughout Europe. The report adds that as a consequence, persons in this group struggle with lower employment rates and lower participation in adult education in the rest of their lives.

The reasons for dropping out are complex and multifaceted. Traditionally this issue has been dealt with a reactionary approach; when the student has been missing classes for some period of time, the school initiates a plan for “bringing the student back”.

What this project proposes is to change this approach from reactive to proactive: Developing a structured way of using data could make it possible to help a given student – maybe even before they realize they need help. By creating methods and an accompanying app that both “onboards” the students to the given educational environment and creates a possible predicative retention approach to student guidance counseling by having the students themselves easily indicate how they experience going to school, we could help a lot more students before they drop out, instead of trying to bring them back. The objective of the project is therefore to use data proactively to combat the considerable challenge of early school leaving.

Strategically this project will focus on:

• A guidebook with instructions and recommendations on how to set up a data based framework and approach to student onboarding and retention, thus addressing and combating early school leaving.
• The development of an exemplary app that has been tested on a variety of students in the consortium partnering countries, providing documentation of how and when it works.