Best Link Up to Employment

Preventing early school leaving is a major issue on local, regional, national and European level. The goal of the EU Strategy 2020 is to reduce the dropout rate to less than 10%. On national level, the Netherlands aim to reduce the number of new early school leavers to a maximum of 35.000 in 2012.

The central goal of the project is the reduction of early school leaving and the stimulation of development of talent and ambitions of youngsters, by improving career orientation and guidance (COG). This subject matches the second goal of the TOI Call for proposals 2012: ‘Support to initial and continuous training of VET teachers, trainers, tutors and VET institution managers.'

The project works on both the quality of COG as well as on realising a continuing pathway of COG throughout several levels of education and the improvement of the connection with the world of work. The implementation of the transfer of innovation will take place in the region of ‘s-Hertogenbosch. Within the region, the local government, several pioneer schools and the local departments of the Employment Services, BZW (a regional employers' organisation with about 500 members) and Philips are involved. The pioneer schools will be the first group in which the developments in the field of COG will be implemented.

The knowledge and experience for the transfer of innovation will be obtained from the Finnish and Austrian partners: TEC and STVG. They are leading parties in Europe in the field of COG. They will be actively involved with all subjects of the transfer, and will focus on the transfer of training material and on the transfer of ways for (regional) cooperation.

The concrete outcomes of the project will be an on going pathway of COG from primary to secondary to (higher) vocational education and a higher quality of COG offered to students. These outcomes will be realised by the implementation of the products developed during the project, such as a format for vision and policy, a training programme for career coaches and a proposal for cooperation between schools.

The impact on the target users on the short term will be a more efficient and sustainable system of COG. The quality of the guidance and the level of cooperation will increase. On the long term, the impact will be a decrease in drop out rates and in the number of learners that switch between studies.
The impact on regional scale will be an on going pathway of COG guidance in the ‘s-Hertogenbosch area, in which schools of several levels and the regional businesses cooperate. The strength of a regional common approach, of an on going pathway, can be adapted and adjusted to other regions in the Netherlands and Europe.