‘Second-chance’ schools project offers new hope

Date: 04/09/1997

YOUNGSTERS in Catania and Bilbao will this month be among more than 500 youths to benefit from the first wave of European Commission pilot projects to combat high youth unemployment.

The opening of the first so-called 'second-chance' schools offers young people who have dropped out of the traditional school system a mixture of education and training relevant to their needs.

The aim is to prevent youngsters being caught in “an irreversible spiral of marginalisation and exclusion”.

The second-chance schools project is a solitary feather in the cap of the Commission, which has the unenviable task of boosting the quality of education in the Union on a tiny budget while taking care not to tread on member states' toes.

Anders Hingel, leader of the second-chance schools project within the Commission's Directorate-General for education, training and youth (DGXXII), says the institution faced an uphill struggle to set up the pilot scheme after it was first proposed in 1995. It had to overcome resistance from national governments who felt that endorsing the idea would reflect badly on their own schools.

“All the member states announced themselves against the project. They misunderstood it as they thought the Commission would take over the model.

They also thought it would be about the ghettoisation of schools and that message would have been disastrous to the school system,” he explains.

But the idea of integrating young people on the margins of society was extremely popular at local level and the Commission received many spontaneous expressions of interest.

“The message of doing something touched something real on a local level. They see these people on the streets. Many cities work on that problem and they have not found ways of integrating young people,” says Hingel.

“Around 15&percent; of the younger generation falls between programmes. For me, this is a political project and a message to the member states that it is unacceptable that young people are not being integrated into society. They feel that training programmes are not for them. We believe that many of these young people have never had a chance.”

Second-chance schools aim to fill the gap with a mix of basic education in subjects such as maths as well as other, more vocational training in languages or computers. They also seek to create a strong link with the labour market.

They will employ a variety of teachers, tutors and trainers who are expected to have experience of working with these types of young people and to develop a new pedagogy to motivate them.

“The teachers have to be innovative, that is for sure,” says Fabienne Bessonne of DGXXII. “The training courses will be very personalised and may include some outside the school.”

The approach is expected to be very much focused on the students as individuals, taking into account both their aptitudes and shortcomings.

The length of the course will vary from school to school, but in order to boost motivation, students will be able to decide their own 'contracts' with the schools and not be forced into fixed learning modules.

The Commission's role is one of coordination and monitoring, with most of the day-to-day organisation decided at a local level within certain guidelines.

The age range of students is likely to be between 18 and 25, and the guidelines stipulate that schools should be located in run-down or poor areas of towns.

It will be up to the local authorities to promote a grass-roots approach and to work with local employers. These companies are expected to become involved by defining the skills and qualifications required by the local employment market, and offering sponsorship, placements and - to successful students - jobs.

For instance, the school in Marseilles, which has been converted from a striking abattoir building and is due to open its doors at the beginning of November, will not admit students until they have a contract with an employer which confirms they can have a job at the end.

All the schools will vary. In Marseilles, around two-thirds of the students will be able to board if they wish to as a way of giving them a new and more positive environment in a campus-type school with a village of enterprises around it.

The Catania school will seek to recruit those in the 16-22 age group and make special efforts to reach difficult categories such as the handicapped or those who have been in trouble with the police. It says it will not only provide vocational training, but also 'socialisation' activities.

“The Commission is not running the schools. It is giving ideas,” says Hingel, who points out that, in any case, he does not have a budget line. “The first message I received was that I would not get any money,” he admits.

The Commission will provide consultants to selected towns and cities to help them set up the schools and develop feasible financing schemes with national and local funding. Fifty per cent of the money will come from EU structural funds or the education and training programmes Socrates and Leonardo.

The consultants will also help build systems to enable both the Commission and the schools to monitor their progress. There will be no evaluation of the project before the end of 1998 and each school will be open for at least 18 months before the Commission assesses it.

Finding students for the second-chance schools requires lateral thinking as they are, by definition, school-leavers who have escaped the attention of authorities. The Commission describes these young people as having “low levels of basic skills, frequently coupled with negative experiences of education”.

In Marseilles the staff are working with local associations and local employment agencies, but this route will not work everywhere, according to Hingel.

“We are targeting people who have given up, so we can't necessarily go through employment routes. We are instead trying to mobilise people using groups closest to them, for instance cultural or sporting groups,” he says.

Choosing students also poses a tricky problem. Bessonne explains: “You can't make selections because this is for young people who won't pass selections; but, at the same time, you can't have very disturbed people.”

Apart from Bilboa (Spain), Catania (Italy) and Marseilles (France), Hameenlinna (Finland), Halle (Germany), Nikea (Greece), Ribe (Denmark), Seixal (Portugal) and Heerlen (The Netherlands) will open second-chance schools by the end of the year. The UK, Ireland and Luxembourg governments are about to launch the selection process for their schools.

The Commission hopes to set up exchanges between the schools for both the teachers and the students.

Hingel is convinced of the value of the second-chance schools project in providing a bridge between education and training for young people. He feels it is “inspiring” because it impossible to pigeon-hole.

“The institutional set-up is not geared towards this programme. Education ministers say it is not their problem. Labour ministers say it is not their problem. There is a weakness in our systems when it comes to answering that question, but it is immoral not to deal with it. Morally we have to do something.”