Tackle is the collection of tools necessary to complete a task as well as the verb to mean the determined effort to deal with a complex problem. The TACKLE project does both of these - it provides a digital toolbox for schools to tackle Early School Leaving and disadvantage through guidance. The digital tools will support schools in evaluating their services and work to assure that, despite the additional pressures on schools within the Covid-19 crisis, they are prepared to tackle disadvantage and early school leaving. The pathways to education, training or access to the labor market by young people who are finishing school and young people in school who are at risk of Early Leaving, must be accompanied with quality guidance services because many connections have been broken as a result of the current Covid-19 crisis.According to Eurostat, the proportion of early leavers from education and training in the EU in 2019 ranged from 3.0 % in Croatia to 17.3 % in Spain . In the TACKLE partnership countries great progress has been made in reducing Early School Leaving and meeting the 2020 benchmark goal. In 2010 the proportion of early leavers in Spain, Italy and Greece was 28.6%,18.2%, and 13.5% respectively compared with 17.3%, 13.5% and 4.1% in 2019. A 2010 Cedefop report by its ESL ambassadors altered that marginalized and vulnerable learners especially are more at risk for disengaging and dropping out and that actions are needed to support students and schools so that the progress made prior to the Covid-19 pandemic in the early leaving from education and training should be sustained and strengthened. As a result of the Covid-19 crisis in Europe, the need for guidance services, monitoring and support in schools for their students is even more urgent. According to a June 2020 study by the Bertelsmann Foundation, the challenges for guidance in times of Coronavirus have been and will be to continue to offer support and follow-up with students and their families despite the conditions and the needed digitalized of guidance and the increase of access to guidance resources overall.The objective of this project is to develop digital evaluation tools for Secondary schools to self-evaluate their academic and career guidance program, to develop an academic and career guidance plan to tackle new challenges and offer an online training module for teachers, guidance practitioners to work with the TACKLE Toolbox and to support teachers in their role to support students, with digital tools and resources, in this unprecedented time. The TACKLE project activities by the numbers:- 1 online school guidance diagnostic Checklist- 1 Guidance Action Plan and Resources creator- 1 Training Module for teachers, guidance practitioners and other educators- 3 contexts - Spain, Italy, Greece- 5 partner organisations- 75 schools participating in the Pilot Action of the Toolbox- 65 teachers and guidance practitioners trained in the Pilot of the TACKLE Training Module. - 45 participants in the multiplier event of the project- A total of at least 200 education professionals participating in the project activities to develop the intellectual outputs.The methodologies that will be used to develop these tools and achieve the planned results are participatory - involving the professionals on the groups in secondary schools as well as the broader school -business community through focus groups or an expert review and validation process. The desired impact of the TACKLE project is for the schools using the TACKLE toolbox to provide career education and guidance activities that support transitions to further education, training and work from Secondary Schools and to tackle Early School Leaving with a coherent and school community-wide guidance action plan implemented by trained professionals. The current coronavirus crisis makes more urgent the need to ensure that schools and educators continue and strengthen their academic and professional guidance plans and resources in support of the transitions, decision-making and pathways of their students, but the need for these tools does not end with the pandemic. The TACKLE toolbox will relevant for schools to employ beyond the pandemic and to strategically implement guidance actions, be guiding schools, that tackle the complexities and supporting their students on their education and training pathways.

"The project idea derives from the necessity to use and develop innovative guidance tools having the role to improve knowledge and awareness on careers and training pathways among young people.In the Partner Countries, most career guidance services are provided by public bodies, educational institutions, private authorized training institutions and also by the nongovernmental sector, which is nowadays increasingly addressing social issues.Unfortunately, in the partner countries market of career counseling services there are no adequate tools to highlight the connectionsbetween the personal interests, the potential career paths and education and training offers or in updating needs. Many educational and occupational choices are made without adequate knowledge of all possible career perspectives available in the European labour market.The main aims and objectives of this project are to adapt and transfer a guidance model, a personalized career guidance softwarethat allows users to create a ""matching"" between the characteristics of different jobs and the preferences expressed. The software iscreated specifically to assist and facilitate decision processes in the field of career guidance.The project aims to improve the quality of vocational and educational guidance services provided by all partner countries indifferent geographical contexts, through the transfer of the “DOC model” provided by Cascaid (UK), which willbe refined through a process of analysis, translation and testing, with the help and supervision of qualified partners that havealready successfully used the model but they need to update it.The consortium comprises 9 international partners from Italy, UK, Spain, Romania having the expertise and the know-how for making the transfer of innovation in Bulgaria and the update of the model in the other 4 countries involved in the project. This international partnership will offer the proper framework for discussions, sharing of experiences, innovative practices and methodologies and also for development of results achieved so far.The main expected outcomes are: web site of the project; database of profiles in the national languages as technicalsupport for the guidance model; training model and materials for practitioners; e-learning platform in English; PDF version of thehandbook for guidance practitioners in all partner languages.The main results are the translation and adaptation of new career profiles, distribution of copies of the printed version of the manualfor guidance and counseling, testing of the model by the Bulgarian partners.The envisaged impact is reflected in the improvement of guidance services quality for young people; the enrichment of the information and guidance processes, to support individual choices of training and careers; the enlargement of information concerning careers and related training systems; the improvement of integration between guidance systems; promoting awareness on the European dimension of guidance."

Guiding Cities promueve la colaboración entre los diferentes agentes implicados en el ámbito de la educación y la orientación con el objetivo de mejorar la planificación estratégica de los recursos y servicios para la reducción del abandono escolar. En este sentido, el proyecto Guiding Cities ofrece un conjunto de herramientas de análisis, seguimiento y benchmarking para la mejora de la calidad, la innovación y el acceso a los servicios de orientación potenciando así acciones para la prevención del abandono escolar. Actualmente, al nivel local, hay muchos agentes trabajando en espacios diversos que contribuyen a la política y los servicios de orientación académica y profesional; estos servicios diversos deberían ser integrados dentro de una estrategia. En el consorcio de Guiding Cities participan 8 entidades de 4 países que reflejan entre sí la diversidad de agentes dentro del ámbito de la orientación académica y profesional. El consorcio busca generar sinergias para afrontar retos similares – altos niveles de abandono escolar – y asegurar así que la orientación forma parte de la estrategia de los centros educativos y la comunidad en general – para detector y atender a jóvenes en situaciones de riesgo. Guiding Cities (GCities) ofrece: - Un análisis de la orientación en 4 países a través de desk-research y la realización de grupos de discusión con decisores y expertos en educación y orientación. - GCities Model, el mapa para crear una ciudad orientadora. - GCities working groups, que involucraron más de 55 expertos y profesionales en el ámbito de la educación y orientación. - La publicación: Preventing ESL through career guidance: study of best practices, que analiza las 47 prácticas de orientación y su correlación con el Modelo GCities. - GCities Checklist, una herramienta para la evaluación y la mejora. - GCities Impact Study, una publicación con directrices de cómo y porqué usar las herramientas de GCities y un análisis de su impacto y uso en más de 50 organizaciones. Todos los recursos de GCities están disponibles en la página web (http://www.guidingcities.eu/) y las herramientas están disponibles en 6 idiomas (inglés, español, catalán, italiano, rumano y griego). A través de este proyecto se impulsó la mejora del desarrollo profesional de técnicos locales de servicios municipales y orientadores que trabajan en el sector escolar. También se desplegaron estrategias para mejorar la calidad de la educación sobre el mundo laboral en el aula a través del análisis de actividades y recursos existentes, y el desarrollo de un modelo de orientación y materiales para toda la comunidad con un checklist o lista de comprobación para comparar, evaluar, planificar y ajustar los servicios a las necesidades de cada objetivo y las necesidades globales de toda la comunidad. GCities mejoró la formación y habilidades de maestros, técnicos locales y decisores en el ámbito de la orientación. Municipios y comunidades fueron formados y preparados con las herramientas de GCities para revisar las actividades de orientación realizadas por los diferentes agentes y planificar y coordinar estratégicamente las acciones necesarias para atender los grupos con más necesidades, como los que han abandonado el sistema. El proyecto promueve una visión holística y coordinada de la orientación al nivel local, incluso al nivel del centro, con una mirada hacia las mejores prácticas en Europa para reducir el abandono escolar prematuro.

The Cultura Universalis project intends to develop and practice a collection of creative culture-based activities workshops and an interactive online game to enhance intercultural competence and prosocialness through art in children aged 7-14. Globalization has brought a wide range of cultures in closer contact than ever before while Europe itself is a context of great cultural diversity. Yet, evidence shows that there is a widespread lack of intercultural competence (IC) and prosocialness both in national educational curricula and the general population, as well. This is emphatically confirmed by the general social tense on immigration and social inclusion issues. Since research confirms that IC and prosocialness are to be developed early onwards our main target group is pupils 7-14 years old, so as to provide them with skills and cultural incentives which are not easy to develop otherwise. In this context, arts and culture serve as multipliers in achieving our objectives and as a means for ensuring children’s attentiveness. Approximately 250 students and 100 teachers will be involved directly in the development and testing of the outputs, while the results of the project will be disseminated to more than 9800 persons through multiplier events (200), social media (800) and further dissemination activities (8800). Activities supported from the grant for Project Management and Implementation are the day to day management, dissemination and exploitation, the systematic quality assurance, monitoring and evaluation, the creation and maintenance of website, the creation of project visual identity, Leaflets, News items, a project management pack and a sustainability plan. The Cultura Universalis project foresees the development of 3 Intellectual Outputs. IO1 – a Training Programme for Intercultural competence enhancement through arttargeted to pupils, including also a webinar for teachers on the training methodology and implementation. The content of the training will be based on various forms of arts. IO2 – an interactive game, aiming at testing the knowledge acquired during the Training programme and furthermore teaching/testing attitudes, beliefs and enhancing students’ prosocial skills towards their peers with diverse characteristics, origin and religious background. IO3 - a digital handbook for children and a digital companion for teachers aiming at providing them with guidance before gaming, assisting them during gaming, and also including additional creative activities for intercultural competence improvement.The progress, quality and achievement of project activities will be monitored in accordance with the Management Plan, Dissemination Plan, Quality Assurance & Evaluation Plan and Risk Management Plan by the Coordinator in close cooperation with all partners, while quality of the intellectual outputs will be managed by each leading organisation, thus CI in the case of IO1, AHE in the case of IO2 and ISON in IO3, with all partners’ collaboration as well.All developed in the project results will be available as Open Educational Resources in the seven languages of the partnership, apart from English. The Consortium is built of partners from a variety of geographical and professional backgrounds to ensure the successful implementation of this multilevel project.Among the main expected results of the project are the exercise and development of intercultural and prosocial competences in children, to increase their knowledge and awareness of Europe’s cultural heritage through informal learning and to actively engage them with various forms of art and the interactive online game. Moreover, facilitators/teachers are expected to develop their skills in participatory education, blended-learning and competence-based teaching methods and tools. Accordingly, the expected impact on children is to increase their knowledge about their own as well as others’ cultural background and their creativity while cultivating their intercultural and prosocial competencies and exercising their digital skills. Teachers, through their involvement, are also expected to increase their intercultural, prosocial and digital skills. More importantly, teachers, relevant stakeholders and the general public are expected to acquire knowledge on participatory, culture-generated, and art-based teaching methods and tools which can be used later on.

"The project aims to prevent early school leaving and school drop-out, through the development of career learning in primary schools and the improvement of teaching skills. Early School Leaving (ESL) is a serious and complex problem for Europe as it represents missed opportunities for young people and a loss of social and economic potential for the whole society. The idea of JOBLAND is to improve career learning at the first level of the school system in 6 Countries for preventing early school leaving, including schools, HE institutions and organisations involved in research and career guidance. The main aims of the Partnership were: To identify and develop teaching and learning approaches, methods and ICT resources that effectively support the development of Career Management Skills in primary schools, as transversal key competences; To develop evaluation methods and practices that improve the quality of Career Management Skills learning at school; To identify and develop training paths for teachers and school counsellors at European level. More than 110 schools were directly and indirectly involved in the project in 6 European countries. Beneficiaries of this project were:-912 teachers and school counsellors involved in the training paths and in the development and testing of the career guidance models and tools.-2461 pupils directly involved within 6 pilot actions for testing the models.-over 5000 teachers and stakeholders involved in events and on-line dissemination and exploitation activities.-over 450000 practitioners and teachers involved in wide open dissemination activities.The project fostered the idea of improving career education at school via an intervention to empower teachers with new skills, methodological resources and education materials (based on gamification and career learning theories), in order to prevent early school leaving and of educational disengagement.The main results of the project were to: 1 - Identify and develop teaching skills for teachers and coherent learning approaches, methods and ICT resources for the development of career education activities at school, within the European concept and framework of Career Management Skills (see Resolution on Lifelong Guidance 2008) as transversal key competences for managing lifelong study and work transitions; 2 - Develop assessment, evaluation methods and practices that improve the quality of learning of Career Management Skills; 3 - Identify skills and develop training paths in this field for teachers and school counsellors, transferable at European level; 4 - Provide coherent and ""user friendly"" tools for teachers and school counsellors in 6 languages.The set of tools and methodological documents of the JOBLAND project included: O1 - CAREER MANAGEMENT SKILLS - A methodological framework for career learning at school; O2 - CAREER TEACHING - Teaching and guidance skills for improving career learning at school; O3 - DESIGN MY FUTURE - Career Learning Units and Videotutorials; O4 - JOBLAND - Exploring careers - Educational game for schools; O5 - CAREER LEARNING AT SCHOOL - Handbook for teachers and practitioners; O6 - JOBLAND DAY - Career Learning in Europe - From theories to practice.The impact of project lies in the essential character of the JOBLAND consortium which enabled to gather institutional relationships and organisations that work at a national and international level in the education, training and guidance sectors, in each Country (Romania, Italy, Denmark, United Kingdom, Spain, Turkey).The impact of the project observed in the pilot actions revealed a great interest of students, teachers and practitioners for digital results, learning units with video tutorials and gamification. Assessment sheets completed by teachers and practitioners showed a great success of Jobland's intellectual results in school practice. 97% of the evaluations were very good, and the suggestions addressed subjective aspects of teaching. The project will certainly develop, in the coming years, a wide base of resources from each partner involved, which can be extended and combined to broaden the effect of the project at European level. In many countries participating in the project, these changes in teachers' mentality regarding the new educational strategy in career education are already being implemented starting with Jobland digital resources. In Romania, for example, the Jobland video tutorials and the Powtoon application, used to create these video tutorials, had a great impact in the context of the pandemic. Romanian Jobland experts have created many educational videos that have inspired the creation of videos throughout the Romanian counselling network. In the CMBRAE network, over 20 videos were created using PowToon, with a national impact on the education system. IO6-JOBLAND DAY, offered the greatest impact of the project at European level."