Breaking the cycle of early school leaving

The decision to leave school early is not made overnight. It is often the culmination of earlier gaps in attainment and support, amplified by poverty, discrimination and language barriers.

In line with the EU's target to reduce early school leaving to below 9 % by 2030, SCIREARLY set out to take existing research and turn it into usable, practical guidance that teachers and policymakers can apply across different contexts and countries.

"Non satis scire - to know is not enough," says Rocío García-Carrión, SCIREARLY coordinator from the University of Deusto in Spain. "Scientific knowledge is important, but that knowledge needs to be useful for society."

Turning evidence into action

SCIREARLY looked beyond the school gates. "Every loss in education means a loss in society," García-Carrión adds. Rather than treating underachievement as an individual deficit, the project examined the conditions that shape learning long before a student drops out. Linguistic barriers, poverty and discrimination can narrow opportunities, affecting attainment and participation in ways that often go unnoticed until the problem becomes acute.

Another key decision was to push the timeline back. While many policies focus on teenagers, SCIREARLY linked prevention, intervention and recovery with a strong emphasis on early childhood education and care.

This was backed by evidence gathering: the project collected close to 2 600 survey responses from early childhood practitioners across 18 countries, helping identify what high-quality early learning environments look like and how they can be supported. This also fed into early childhood quality indicators and a self-assessment tool for practitioners.

What works in schools

SCIREARLY set out to identify what works in real-world and diverse settings. The project examined 20 successful learning environments in 11 countries, including schools serving learners from low socio-economic backgrounds, migrant and refugee communities, and Roma communities, where strong outcomes were achieved despite structural barriers.

SCIREARLY treated these schools as working models, and the same features kept appearing: high expectations, classroom dialogue that builds participation, and whole-school support with skills and well-being built in.

Spotting success is one thing - replicating it is harder. The team moved beyond case studies by working with 16 other schools to examine whether evidence-informed practices could be introduced, evaluated and adapted across different systems and cultures. That shift from analysis to classroom testing gives the project's guidance credibility and a better chance of being used.

"If there is evidence of something working, we don't want it to be an exception," García-Carrión remarks. "We want that to be a norm." The work was distilled into successful practices that teachers can explore and tailor to local contexts.

Turning research into tools and policy

The project developed an evidence-based framework and an online platform that offers practical steps schools can take. The Impact Platform is publicly accessible and designed not only for dissemination, but also for learning and evaluation. Alongside this, SCIREARLY produced a toolkit to help educators and school leaders design, adapt and evaluate inclusive programmes, plus policy briefs for decision makers, educators and families.

Those briefs draw on SCIREARLY's analysis of approaches in countries that have reduced early school leaving sharply. García-Carrión points to Portugal, where early school leaving dropped from around 28 % to about 6 % between 2010 and 2022.

SCIREARLY also stress-tested its guidance in diverse classrooms. 'Translanguaging' is one example: a practical approach for multilingual settings that treats pupils' languages as a resource for learning. Co-creation workshops with teachers, students and other stakeholders helped refine the project's outputs before wider use.

The project culminated in a final conference at the European Parliament in Brussels, hosted by MEP Peter Agius. But for the team, the real achievement is less about where the work was presented and more about what it makes possible afterwards: evidence that travels into classrooms and makes a positive difference in young people's everyday experiences of learning.

SCIREARLY turned decades of research into guidance that can be used early enough to matter, before learners disengage and disappear. The science provides a strong foundation, but SCIREARLY has shown what can happen when it becomes everyday practice.