Context/background:EU, partner countries and partner organizations at different levels in policy making promote smart, sustainable and inclusive growth and wants to set the early school-leaving rate below 10%. The world is changing rapidly. ICT and robots change the needs of the world of work. The 21th century skills give us a set of tools to meet these challenges. But the settings in which pupils best can develop and enhance their skills are mostly not taking into account. Pupils don’t experience the needs, wishes and demands of the changing world while at school. They are not motivated. A 21th century learning environment will look quite different, as well as the role of the teacher and the mindset of the pupils.Objectives:This small project (< € 60.000) wants to diminish early school leaving & drop-out, demotivation and underachievement of pupils in secondary education and pre-VET education. The project will give the pupils – via- their teachers – stimuli as ‘meaningful learning’, ‘learning from the real world’, and ‘personalized learning’. Directions to the teacher how to (re)organize their didactics and classrooms will be given by the ‘Seven Principles’ theoretical model. Better performance in the 21th Century Skills will be the outcome and is therefore the (learning) goal. In a teacher training program teachers will exchange their good practices with each other in an international context. They will learn how to work with the Seven Principles. At home they will practice new ways of motivating pupils and evaluate this with their peers and pupils. Again they will exchange these new insights and in the end of the (3 transnational meetings) training program the good practices will become best practices and will be secured and described in a manual. Teachers work together with peers in regional Communities of Practice (CoP’s). They will use these contacts to disseminate and exploit the project results. The CoP’s will also be the vehicle to organize a follow up project.Number & profile of participants:All partners from NL, EE, BG and RO have a long experience in teaching and managing schools. Partners from NL and EE are networkorganisations. Partners from BG and RO are pre-VET. There are no newcomers in this project, but partners are selected from the West and East of Europe. There are differences in culture regarding teaching and school managing, but these differences will be seen as useful additions to the theoretical model and will be piloted and evaluated.Description of activities:The innovative instruments and approaches are directed towards an interactive website, workshops and discussions in a 3 transnational meetings international course, a teachers manual, co-operation between target groups in regional CoP’s and actions leading to a new follow-up project. Methodology:The innovative product is a teacher training in which there is explicitly room for teachers own input and also much attention for the ideas and wishes from peers and pupils.The innovative method is a theoretical framework called the Seven Principles in which different characteristics and principles are combined with extra attention for meaningful and personalized learning. The framework will be expanded with the insights of teachers, peers and pupils alike. This ultimately generates best practices which will be exchanged and disseminated within an EU network of regional CoP’s.Results & impact:The impact of this small project will be that the directly involved participating teachers are able to organize their learning environment in such a way that the 21th Century Skills will best be mastered and that their pupils will be more motivated to learn and not to leave school. They are also able to disseminate their results to other teachers, school management and parents on a local and regional scale where they will be seen as a respected interlocutor.In the follow-up project national and EU influence will be forwarded via an umbrella organization which obtained good results in a former Erasmus project.The measured impact will be reported by our quality manager at the 3th transnational meeting. There he will report the scale of satisfaction from teachers, pupils, school management and parents. The participating teachers will use the outcomes of this preparatory project in their future teaching. Every year they will have a CoP meeting to discuss progress, changes and outlooks.They will participate in and prepare the follow up project for new partners for longer term benefits.

does not apply; see above