GHENT

Belgium

Ghent, situated in Belgium and lead partner of Stay Tuned, created an overall plan to prevent early school leaving, and to create new perspectives for young people who leave school early anyway.

Twelve secondary schools were united in ‘Operatie Geslaagd’ (‘Operation Accomplished’) to jointly reduce the number of early school leavers. To support this engagement the Ghent Education Centre ran a pilot project on drafting and implementing school specific action plans.

Each school started with an analysis of the baseline position, revealing both strengths and working points, from which a selection of priorities was made. Challenges included engaging school teams to actively participate and connect to the project, translating school specific priorities into a specific and concrete action plan.

Ghent’s story is one of facilitating change in school contexts, to tackle the risk factors that cause early school leaving in a more effective way. These ‘lessons learned’ are now implemented in a new project, open to all secondary schools in Ghent.