Obtaining an education and a diploma are valuable instruments in today’s society. It is shown that people without a secondary diploma are unemployed for a longer time than people who have acquired a secondary diploma. In 2015, 58.2 % of 18 to 24 year old early leavers from education and training were either unemployed or inactive.Still, a significant number of students drop out of secondary education before obtaining a diploma (=early school leaving). Some of them decide to go for their diploma of secondary education later on in life. Second chance education in Europe is often successful in helping young people who have failed to accomplish secondary education.But also adult education faces an increasing number of drop-outs. Combining an adult life with studies remains challenging. Adult educators have a sense of what causes adult learners to drop out but they are merely assumptions. Because of this lack of information, the prevention of drop-outs in adult education often does not tackle the real causes and therefore fails. Adult education in Europe was in need of concrete, practical measures to deal with dropout in both second chance education and adult education in general. By developing and applying specific measures, the project 'Dropping in the drop-outs' (DIDO) aimed at increasing the chances of succession of adult students throughout Europe and, that way, hopes to contribute to the Europe 2020 strategy which sets out a target of reducing the share of early leavers of education and training to less than 10 % and increasing the share of the population aged 30 to 34 having completed tertiary or equivalent education to at least 40% by 2020. To achieve this objective, DIDO developed the following two results: 1) Requirements analysis report: based on the research efforts of the DIDO consortium the following two questions were answered: a) Why do students in adult education drop-out before graduating? b) Which good practices in the field of drop-out prevention in adult education exist in the partners' organisations, the partners' countries and Europe? 2) Dropping in the drop-outs toolkit: this toolkit contains concrete tools and tips and tricks, turning it into a practical instrument for adult education providers in Europe to decrease the dropout rate in adult learning. The tools were developed and tested within the DIDO consortium. This project focused on adult learners at risk of dropping out their educational pathway and leaving school without acquiring a diploma. More specific, the focus of this project is on younger adults under the age of 30, with a low income and without a job since research has proven that this group is especially vulnerable for dropout. The DIDO consortium consisted of the six following partners across Europe:- GO! CVO Antwerpen (Belgium): adult education provider- Axxell (Finland): VET provider offering education for e.g. adults - Curio (the Netherlands): secondary VET and adult education provider- AidLearn (Portugal): training, action-research and consulting company - HF & VUC FYN (Denmark): adult education provider- The Swiss Federation for Adult Learning (Switzerland): umbrella organisation for general and vocational adult learning (associated partner supported and financed by Movetia Switzerland)The toolkit has been a great result and is, due to its user-friendliness, currently being used by both the staff that participated in the project and others in and outside the organisation. Tackling dropout can now be done in a more holistic context by linking dropout policy to concrete tools already available. Adult learners benefit from improved career guidance and competent support in crisis situations as organisations have gained insight in their challenges and now have tools available to overcome these challenges. In the long term, the DIDO project should contribute to a reduction in the number of people dropping out of education and thus to a higher number of people graduating from adult education. This will have an impact on long-term unemployment and the employability of graduates.

"We have achieved the goals we set out to do; our project is about finished. We have identified parameters relevant for student retention at our quite diverse institutions, investigated these through interviews, questionnaires and observations (with each partner assigned to a specific role/task). The data obtained has been scrutinized, and we have concluded on what ended up being the must fruitful keywords - ""care"" and ""flexibility"", as well as teaching methods. Concerning our distribution of tasks beween partners: Coleg Cambria and Axxell has been visited and investigated. They both are big institutions with retention success. University of lower Silesia has been leading into designing observation grids etc, and elaborating data. Campus Vejle has lead the project, and have been primary producing the ebook, and the website. Publisher Systime was to write the ebook with partners assistance, but Campus Vejle overtook this task almost completely.Our conclusions on retention lead to trial runs and some changes in retention relevant areas, as described by the respective partners here:Campus Vejle: CV has made changes into the “care”-area: A new student coach Louise Seremet Sørensen has been employed. This coach has the same function as the pastoral coaches at Coleg Cambria. Thus CV has separated the care function from the teachers, as our research implied that the double-function was no good approach. Campus Vejle has also increased the frequence of care-taking interviews with students. On the flexibility side CV has widened the array of profiled classes to students individual needs, so that each new student has a wider range of choices. I.e we have now the profiles “minus 20 year class”, “gaming class” (we have just moved our E-sport students who gets access to E-game facilities into new and specialized classrooms), and we are anticipating an “ADHD-class” (we shall find a better name for this class). Statistics from april 2019 shows that retention has improved significantly at Campus Vejle during over the past year, and as we have not made any major changes besides the above mentioned, we are prone to think that these changes have had an effect.Axxell: The project had a big impact on Axxell and the way we work with students. The benefits of working in an international project is that you through networking with the project partners can establish good contacts with your peers. You get to share best practices and ask recommendations on how to implement what you see/learn.One of the biggest impacts of the project was the way the Welch partner worked with a method that was/is called Pastoral Coaches. Through the project Axxell was able to learn and see how Pastoral coaches work and the impact they have on students. During the project Axxell developed a new group of staff called Examenshandledare. The idea for Examenshandledare came from the Pastoral coaches and they work now in a similar manner at Axxell. By introducing Examenshandledare we have become better at making sure that the students are cared for and Axxell has become better at recognizing risk factors for students dropping out. Even though Axxell has become better at this, due to Learning for Life, we still think we have a lot to learn about and hope to be able to participate in a European project working on establishing tools that helps prevent students from dropping already from the first day students begin their education. The 2 participants from Axxell, Unni and Henriette, were working as teachers when the project begun but by the end of the project they had been selected to work in the newly established positions of Examensledare, together with 4 other persons selected for this position. Unni and Henriette has educated the other Examenhandledare to the way a pastoral coach works and have thus implemented it in Axxell.From Denmark we learned the importance of creating welcoming surroundings/areas for students where they can work while working on project or just hang out during their breaks. Due to the project we have made changes to public areas at Axxell, trying to make them inviting and making students feel more comfortable and at ease. We’ve come to realise that it is important that students feel comfortable at school and that they have areas where they can socialize together. Another impact the project has had on Axxell is that we learned how to become better at making the students voice heard. We have now involved students in the planning of curriculas and also we become better at educating students in providing constructive feed-back in a way that will support them and other students learning.University og Lower Silesia: Regarding the implementations of particular solutions in our institution, I would like to remind, that our role in the project was to provide with analytical and pedagogical perspective. Also, we are the tertiary education institution, thus we haven't planned to implement particular organizational solutions as an outcome of the project. However, we claim, that as a result of the project we gained the knowledge about different modes of organization of the vocational education and we promote ""care"" and ""flexibility"" as an asset way to organize vocational education in Poland. We do it through presentations on seminars and conferences, preparation of academic papers, public discussions about best ways for vocational education development. We plan to establish the Centre for Skills Development at the ULS, which will be providing support for vocational education institutions in Poland according to better adaptations to nowadays expectations of the labormarket and economy. The experiences (the ""Flexibility"" and the ""Care"" modes in particular) learned out of the Learning For Life project, will be the essential part of the recommendations we will disseminate. In this respect we will cooperate with Technical Schools and Basic Vocational Schools. Moreover, as I am the expert of the Ministry of National Education of Poland for the vocational education issues, it is possible to promote outcomes of the project on the level of national educational policy. For the beginning it can be use in works on the Integrated Skills Strategy, which is the strategic document elaborated by Polish government in cooperation with the OECD. Its aim is to strenthen the skills development and usage system in Poland, and the vocational education, allong with LifeLong Learning and LifeWide Learning Perspective are crutial parts."

There is an increasing number of migrants in Europe, which means, among other things, a growing potential for the labor force. At the same time, one big generation is approaching the age of retirement and a demographic decrease can already be foreseen. The working life needs more workers, and long vocational training programs are not always the best and the most effective solution. Recognition of migrants’ vocational skills and the development of the methods that are related to this process are a very current topic in Europe at the moment. In order to offer efficient vocational or further training for the migrants or to indicate them a place that corresponds their professional skills, there must be an investigation that shows the prior learning, competencies and skills that are relevant for their professional development.New tools and methods for assessing migrants’ prior vocational skills need to be developed. The Fast Track project responds to this need and develops tests for three professions: assistant nurse, kitchen assistant and tiler. The selection of these professions is mainly based on interviews with working life: there is a tangible need for workers in these fields and, on the other hand, the level of the language skills is lower than is many other professions. The approach in the tests is non-linguistic and the outcomes will be web-based which helps the project to reach a large audience – and users also in the countries that do not participate in the project. Moreover, this method could be easily transferred to other contexts and to other vocational fields; the manuals, workshops and other support provided by the project will help in this process. The basis for the approach, as well as the prototypes of the tests in other vocational fields, have already been created in Finland in 2008-2010 and the feedback from the stakeholders has been positive: the approach has been stated as innovative, needed and efficient for today’s needs in working life. The partnership of this two-year project consists of training providers from Finland (Axxell, the coordinator, and Omnia), Denmark (Vestegnens Sprog-og Kompetencecenter), Germany (Bildungsmarkt e.v.), Iceland (Mimir-simenntun) and Turkey (Trabzon teknik ve endustri meslek lisesi denizcilik anadolu meslek lisesi).

Access for young VET students to teaching and training methods and work experiences in other countries helps to improve their employability in a global economy: work-based learning is critical for employability at all education levels, particularly in the current context of extremely high youth unemployment. However, Agriculture is not a popular vocational area in Europe; student numbers have dropped dramatically in the last 10 years and therefore there is a clearly defined need to increase the quality and attractiveness of this sector in many European countries. Opportunities for physical mobility in agricultural VET traineeships is high but the exchange of ECVET-units between European schools is low. Professionalisation of staff is essential to make internationalisation in education a success as they play a crucial role in learning international competences. The Amoove21 (Agricultural Move 21st Century skills) project addresses these challenges by:1) Creating a sustainable network in which annually accredited learning mobility opportunities are offered to VET Agricultural students. The Amoove21 project specifically focuses on agricultural education programmes on livestock/dairy farming, horse farming/equine and animal care. There are no international education opportunities for these programmes yet. In the project the partner network creates nine enriching ECVET units of two weeks in which both theory and practice is offered in English to a mixed group of national and Amoove21 partner students. The ultimate goal of the project is to make sure that the ECVET units are sustainable and will be used also after completion of the project.2) Increasing teachers’ international experience and professionalism. The ECVET units will be developed by teachers that are teaching at the six partner institutions. The teachers develop the ECVET units with their national colleagues and with teachers from the partner institutions. By doing so the teachers become more internationally competent and their professional orientation, knowledge and skills will grow. 3) Increasing students’ accredited 21st century skills to become competitive in a growing international labour market. Through virtual international orientation at home and by physically participating in the ECVET units offered abroad, youngsters will be equipped with digital, theoretical, practical, social and cultural skills which will enhance their chances to be competitive on an international labour market. The transnational nature of the Amoove21 project enables the involved schools to jointly develop nine ECVET units. To realize accreditation of the units’ contents, the units will be embedded in the curricula and the EU ECVET Toolkit will be used. Next to the ECVET units, the Amoove21 project results in virtual assignments. A large group of students works together on virtual assignments that have two aims: to increase the 21st century skills of the students and to increase their knowledge of each other’s cultures. The ECVET units and the assignments will be developed by teachers and the students will carry them out during a pilot phase. Teachers join the students during the last days of a pilot in order to evaluate the pilot and to further improve the unit based on the outcomes of the evaluation. Participation of the teachers in these activities increases their skills and international competence. Furthermore the teachers participate in teacher training sessions on subjects as ECVET and eTwinning. A virtual calendar on the Amoove21 website will be used to annually offer opportunities to students to gain learning and work experience abroad. This platform is sustainable as it will stay online after completion of the project. The fundamental change that the Amoove21 project is aiming for is better employability of European agricultural VET students, more professional European teachers, higher quality of European agricultural VET education programmes, growing understanding and cooperation between VET systems and companies in different European countries and that companies may open up faster to mobility requests. The ultimate goal of the project is to make sure that the ECVET units are sustainable and will be used also after completion of the project.The Amoove21 project is a collaboration of Clusius College (NL), Nordwin College (NL), Skjetlein Videregaende Skole (NO) and Axxell (FI). Every project partner brings its own expertise and will use this expertise in the development of the ECVET units. All partners cooperate actively with local and regional agricultural businesses and thus relationships between education and enterprises have been firmly forged. Each Amoove21 vocational team will involve at least 1 business partner who will A) have an important role in deciding the contents of a unit and B) offer students opportunities at their company to see how theory learnt at the college is translated into practical applications in industry.

WorkSafe was a 28 month long strategic partnership that developed & implemented tools that makes work based learning (WBL) within metalwork and construction more transparent and safe. The partnership consisted of 6 partners from 5 different countries. The partners were: P1 = Axxell Utbildning Ab, Finland P2 = Charlottenlund Upper Secondary School, Norway P3 = ROC Noorderpoort, Netherlands P4 = Cfai Adamic, France P5 = Education and Mobility, Spain P6 = Ikaslan, SpainIn order for the intellectual outputs (IOs) to be usable and fill the needs of the small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs), SMEs and the Centers for Occupational Safety, unions etc in the participating countries were involved in developing, testing, evaluating and finalizing the IOs. The need for WorkSafe became evident as teachers started to raise concerns about students work safety during WBL. They felt there was a need to develop tools that improves students safety during WBL. After analyzing the problem more in detail we realized that many of the SMEs wants to improve collaboration with VET providers and that they need support, guidance and tools that clarifies their tasks during WBL. The WorkSafe partners have learned that even if improved work safety is a topic that is of importance in all European countries there are national differences when it comes to the implementation of work safety. This is why it was of great value that this project was done as a collaboration with partners from different European countries. WorkSafe aimed and did 1) collect, compare & clarify common standards relating to work safety and point out what standards are unique for Finland, Norway, Netherlands, France and Spain; 2) Make it safer and easier to send metalwork & construction students on WBL to these 5 countries; 3.) Created a WorkSafe Toolbox and 4) Created an Online WorkSafe Manual that can be used for eg. training/education/raising awareness. In order to reach these aims we collaborated with employers within our region. 6 transnational project meetings (PM) and 1- 2 skype meetings were held in between the PMs. During the meetings each partner kept the others aware of what steps they had taken to implement the outcomes of the project. Work meetings focusing on developing, evaluating and making amendments to the IOs together with silent partners were held regularly. Towards the end of the project each partners held a Multiplier Conference in the country they represent in order to test the usability and collect feedback on the outcomes. The project developed 2 Intellectual Outputs: 1) WorkSafe ToolboxTarget group: VET providers, teachers, students, employers & work mentors and other stakeholders. Aim: 1) improve cooperation between VET providers and SMEs within metalwork and construction, 2) provide VET providers and SMEs with tools that helps to improve work safety during WBL nationally and in Europe and 3) make collaboration more transparent. The toolbox will e.g. a) help to map problem areas and common obstacles, b) describe possible obstacles and suggest solutions and ways to address obstacles, c) describe minimum requirements shared by all and those who are specific for the partner countries and d) describe tasks/responsibilities relating to work safety during WBL 2) WorkSafe Online Manual Target group: Teachers, employers, work mentors & studentsAim: Create an online manual that can be used to educate students, employers and work mentors on requirements relating to improving work safety during WBL both nationally and in Europe. The Training Course will a) visualize the minimum requirements in work safety within metalwork & construction, b) bring up benefits of following and maintaining safety regulations during WBL, c) provide tools to maintain & supervise that work safety standards are obtained and followed, d) make the cooperation between student, work mentor and teachers more transparent, e) improve work safety during WBL, f) help interested parties to implement the WorkSafe Toolbox Expected and already noticed impacts/benefits 1) Improved work safety during WBL within metalwork & construction 2) Raised awareness of national similarities and differences in work safety in Finland, Norway, Netherlands, France and Spain 3) Raised awareness of the importance of collaborating with the SMEs in topics relating to work safety during WBL 4) Improved quality of WBL both nationally and during European mobilities 5) Improved cooperation between the teacher, student, work mentor (and hosting/sending partners during European mobilities) 6) Improved quality of the learning experience students have during WBL nationally and in Europe 7) Increased number of European mobilities as the VET providers and SMEs feel better prepared to host students from foreign countries.