EU Commission Presentation on Social Inclusion in Education with PREVENT, by Dr. Paul Downes, on 28 April 2015

Building on themes central to the PREVENT project, he proposed an agenda of structural indicators for national and school strategies, including ones with a focus on parental involvement for early school leaving prevention. He also highlighted the potential for a quality mark for inclusive systems for schools, to be developed also for local municipalities, drawing again on his first report for PREVENT.

The session was chaired by Jan Pakulski, Head of the Unit on Studies, Impact Assessments, Analysis and Statistics, Directorate-General for Education and Culture. The respondents to the presentation were: Stan van Alphen, Policy Officer, Statistics, Studies and Surveys, Klara Engels-Perenyi, Policy Officer, Higher Education Policy Unit and Garkov Vladimir, Policy Officer, School and Educators, from the Commission’s Directorate-General for Education and Culture.

The session was organised through the new EU Commission Network of Experts on the Social Aspects of Education and Training (NESET II). Paul Downes’ presentation focused on review processes to implement an agenda for system reform and development across the EU, with regard to early school leaving prevention and access to higher education for socio-economically excluded groups. It built on his Urbact PREVENT reports, Towards a Differentiated, Holistic and Systemic Approach to Parental Involvement in Europe for Early School Leaving Prevention (EU Urbact Secretariat Paris 2014), Early School Leaving Prevention and Engaging Parents from Ethnic Minority and Migrant Backgrounds: Key Issues and Guiding Principles Across 9 European City Municipalities (2015), as well as his recent book, Access to Education in Europe: A Framework and Agenda for System Change (Dordrecht, Springer 2014).