RESLEA was a research project under the European Commission’s Lifelong Learning Programme. The project aimed to develop a model and toolkit for reducing early school leaving across Europe. The project ran across five countries (the UK, Slovenia, Hungary, Portugal and Germany) with partners across all countries.

The project included:

• research on policies, programmes and initiatives for reducing early school leaving in the five countries;
• analysis and collection of good practices for reducing early school leaving;
• developing a pilot project and model in four partner countries and outcome indicators to assess and compare results across countries;
• developing toolkits to identify young people at risk of dropping out and describing methods for intervening at schools, families/communities and teach/trainer level;
• validating and exploiting the model and toolkit in close cooperation with stakeholders and target groups;
• dissemination research results via a project website, seminars and international conferences;
• ongoing quality assurance and evaluation of the project.

The project took a systems and participatory approach to the work and stakeholders and target groups were involved in all stages of the project.

The Tavistock Institute was responsible for developing an exploitation strategy for the project and is also contributed to other elements of the work.