STAY TUNED
There are many different strategies for tackling ‘Early Leaving from Education and Training’ (ELET – also known as Early School Leaving). But how do we turn good policy and strategy into actions that deliver results?
Stay Tuned is a network of nine European cities that have been implementing diverse projects to do just that. Working together since 2016, the Stay Tuned cities have been working as one of four “Implementation Networks” within URBACT, the European Union’s learning and exchange programme for cities.
The URBACT Implementation Networks have supported cities to exchange expertise and knowledge about how to implement their projects more successfully, looking to understand and improve how the implementation of policy works in reality. Stay Tuned has been specifically focussed on projects to reduce ELET, following and supporting the nine cities on their journey to turn their strategies into action at a local level.
Not only the WHAT, but also the HOW was at the heart of the project: how to make solutions work, how to implement them well, and how to ensure they have the impact we hope for.
Many social challenges exist within complex systems. These challenges manifest themselves as complex or “wicked” problems. ELET is no exception - it is caused by a range of factors, which combine and interrelate in a complex way that is difficult (or even impossible) to analyse. This makes traditional top-down or linear project methods unsuitable for tackling such challenges effectively. Through Stay Tuned, we have explored what this means in reality as the nine partner cities followed each other’s change processes to implement their plans and policies.
Stay Tuned aims to reduce the high urban rates of ELET by actively pursuing the implementation of the 2011 Council Recommendation on policies to reduce ELET. The network capitalises on existing urban expertise and strive for improved implementation with sustainable impact. This requires changes in organisations and the mind-set of people: a systematic configuration of services, eroded boundaries between services and professions, development of synergies, clear definition of roles and responsibilities.