RESL.eu was a FP7-funded research project dedicated to Reducing Early School Leaving in Europe. The RESL.eu project presented a comprehensive, intersectional and gender sensitive approach of the issue of Early School Leaving (ESL) in Europe aiming at in-depth analyses of existing data and the collection of new empirical data in order to innovate educational systems at the European, national and regional level.
The project focused on the development and implementation of education policies, and the transferability of country-specific good practices. RESL.eu also sought to understand the mechanisms behind, processes leading to and trajectories following ESL by examining the actions, perceptions and discourses of all youngsters (both those who are early school leavers and those who are not) as well as those of their significant others (family, peer group, school staff). The project built on existing practices to tackle ESL and intends to develop innovative approaches for regular schools and in alternative learning arenas.
The research objectives were to to design common EU definitions and concepts on early school leaving and conduct comparative policy analyses; to collect data and to identify characteristics of youth at risk of ESL as well as protective factors and to examine ESL prevention in schools and ESL remediation through alternative learning arenas.
CEPS was commissioned by the University of Antwerp to conduct research for the WP7. CEPS wrote the Publication 8 on early school leaving in the EU. It explored the possibilities of using cost-benefit analysis as an instrument to evaluate measures prior to their adoption or later on (when deciding to keep a measure in place). Within the publication, the focus was on the costs and benefits associated with preventive, intervention and compensatory measures of early school leaving examined in RESL.eu.
