School4Life Companies and schools together against school dropout
The Program will offer support to students, teachers and families. The dropout rate in Italy stands at 13% against the European target of 10%
At the start the project promoted by ELIS and 11 large companies throughout Italy to curb high school students dropout. School4Life will last two years and includes orientation activities aimed at young people at risk of dropping out as well as initiatives to support families and teachers. The goal is to involve 15,000 students throughout the country, with particular attention to those areas where the phenomenon is most widespread. According to data from the Ministry of Education, mainly and in this order: Sardinia, Campania, Sicily, Lombardy and Liguria.
Compared to the targets set by Brussels with the Europe 2020 strategy to bring dropout rates below the 10% threshold, the ISTAT Report on Education Levels 2021 reports that in our country the percentage stands at 13.1, out of the total school population. A problem that has a direct impact on employment prospects and, more in general, on the planning skills of young people. Indeed, according to the 2019 OECD Report, the unemployed with middle school license are double the number of high school graduates and almost four times the number of university graduates. Furthermore, again according to OECD, early school leaving before graduation would contribute 35% to the "neets" phenomenon, people between 20 and 24 who do not study, work or seek employment. According to ISTAT surveys, in 2020 there were more than 2 million.
Thanks to the collaboration between schools and businesses, School4Life will be able to face the difficulties experienced by young people, combining teaching and pedagogical skills with range of knowledge in relation to the world of work. The orientation activities with the students will involve, among others, as role modelsand mentors, business professionals and university students. Orientation meetings will alternate with the realization of team projects, creativity marathons(creathon) and other activities meant to offer moments of comparison and learning on an experiential basis. Training programs for teachers, webinars for parents and the "Noi Restiamo" desk for the recovery of situations at risk, will instead be the tools aimed at adults who accompany children on their school path.
The Program also aims to encourage the female students population towards STEM subjects (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics), skills that are still mainly a prerogative of the male universe in Italy, but which will determine more and more job opportunities in the future. According to a survey carried out last February by ELIS, in collaboration with Skuola.net, on a sample of 3,000 high school students, more than half of the female students interviewed declared that they had just enough, little or no knowledge of these subjects.
School4Life involves Ansaldo Energia, Banco BPM, Enel, Eni, Fincantieri, the Ernesto Illy Foundation, Intesa Sanpaolo, Leonardo, Poste Italiane, UniCredit and the Snam Foundation. The project is coordinated by ELIS, a non-profit training organization and consortium that brings together over 100 large Italian groups and SMEs. Thanks to the initiatives carried out over the last four years by ELIS with its business partners as part of the School-Business System Program, the School4Life project will rely on a consolidated network of over 600 schools throughout Italy.
