Working to reduce school dropout rates in Europe

The Universidad Pontificia Comillas organised the kick off meeting for the European Lets Care project: Building Safe and Caring Schools to Foster Educational Inclusion and School Achievement.

This project has 14 partners from 9 countries and is coordinated by the Universidad Pontificia Comillas through a multidisciplinary team of experts led at the University Institute for Migration Studies (IUEM, in Spanish) by Mercedes Fernández, at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences (Comillas CIHS, from the Spanish) by Isabel Muñoz San Roque, and at the University Institute of the Family (IUF, in its Spanish initials) by Ana Berástegui Pedro-Viejo. Its aim is to improve the care dimension of educational inclusion to reduce school dropout rates and increase academic results in vulnerable populations, covering 4 different levels: individual, relational, community and political.

The work session, which was attended by representatives of the 14 institutions, was held at the Comillas Conecta Lab and served to define the approach to be followed in the project among all the partners involved, as well as to coordinate the work strategy for the coming months. A round table on educational experiences, coordinated by Jorge Úbeda, from the PROMAESTRO Foundation, with the participation of Salomé Blanco and Mar Velázquez, from IES Francisco de Quevedo, Elisa Goñi, from the Tomillo Foundation and Daniel Silva Caldera, student of the PROMOCIONA Programme of the Fundación Secretariado Gitano, provided first-hand knowledge on some of the contexts in which this project will be working. In addition, Ana Berástegui delivered a speech titled Safe Learning: Attachment as a Cornerstone for School Success, which dealt with the importance of student-teacher relationships for the appropriate development of the child, their educational inclusion and academic results, from an attachment-based perspective.

Lets Care is designed with the aim of creating a theoretical framework around attachment theory and Safe Schools to create practical tools and propose educational policies which make advances in stopping the generational transfer of poverty and social and educational exclusion.

Lets Care will explore the education system of 6 European countries and the characteristics surrounding the school context in these countries, and will work with 120 school institutions integrating 4 different educational levels, a sample of 18,000 students and 2400 teachers, paying special attention to students from vulnerable family, educational and social backgrounds.