Social Inclusion of Students with Special Needs into maintream Technical and Vocational Secondary Education

VET providers all over Europe experience the same problem: students leave education or training without completing it. Most of these early school leavers struggle with social, mental or learning problems and many end up being not in education, employment or training (NEET). In a society with lurking demographic challenges and economic and social problems NEET is not a solution, neither to the young people categorized as such, nor to society.

Knowledge and good experiences are needed in order to succeed. The VET system needs well proven methods that can help teachers to successfully approach these students, the world of work needs knowledge that can help them to understand needs and skills specific for these young people, and the students need a ‘system' that sees them as individuals with specific needs, strengths and potentials.

SOS-Network – SOcial inclusion of Students with special needs into mainstream VET and world of work - unifies Europe in its quest for responding to the problems of early school leaving. By focusing on social inclusion of students with special needs into mainstream VET the network provides knowledge, well proven methods and access to experienced practitioners from all over Europe. 14 partners from 12 countries have united in order to find the best practices, methods and approaches that work.

Moreover, by involving the world of work as well as students in local reference groups the network ensures a tripartite approach to the issue of social inclusion thus pointing at sustainable and innovative solutions to the benefit of VET, the students and the world of work.
 
Among key outputs are:

- SOS-Portal, European One-Stop Shop for all interested in work with students with special needs;
- SOS Mapping of students with special needs – European survey on perceptions of students with special needs;
- SOS Catalogue of interesting cases from all partner countries – at least 50 cases;
- 15 SOS-Recommended Methods and Tools