Early school leaving and integration of NEETS into the labour market in Réunion Island

While many actors are involved and many actions are showing results, the region lacks clear governance and a shared strategic plan to address the issue of early school leavers and the integration of NEETs into the labour market. Driven by the principles of regular communication, active coordination and humble leadership, such an integrated plan needs to be co-designed and shared by all relevant stakeholders, including the young people affected by the interventions and their parents and families.

The planning process, as well as the governance to be put in place, should contribute to strengthening the continuity of planning and funding across organisations. In addition, the strategic plan should be integrated with other strategic policy issues, such as economic development and youth policies, in order to ensure a strong convergence of efforts towards key sectors of the economy of today and the future.

All measures in place should be systematically evaluated, with the aim of continuously improving them where relevant. To prepare the ground for better synergies and complementarities, all stakeholders should be involved in the evaluation process. This also implies that successful interventions should be sustained beyond the limits of traditional project-based funding.

Comprehensive and targeted follow-up of young people throughout their education and vocational careers requires better monitoring of their pathways, overcoming the shortcomings of disconnected information systems. Ideally, an individual follow-up should be aimed for, so that anyone can be offered adequate support measures and opportunities.

While traditional school systems tend to encourage and support academic success, vocational careers often prove to be more appropriate and highly beneficial for many young people at risk of dropping out of school. Promoting a positive image of vocational education and training would encourage better early guidance and avoid unnecessary academic failure leading to early school leaving.

Peers' experiences in their countries show that NEETs are a very diverse group of people with different backgrounds and difficulties to cope with the traditional education and training systems. It is therefore not always appropriate to aim at  bringing them back into these systems. There is a need for innovative and demand-driven approaches outside the traditional pathways to reach and motivate these individuals. These approaches can put spotlight on soft, emotional and transveralskills for personal development, rather than academic knowledge transfer.

The integration of NEETs into the labour market requires the commitment of enterprises by offering suitable jobs and accompanying young people throughout their vocational training process. In order to ensure a continuous flow of job opportunities for young people and successful training offers, enterprises need to be involved at an early stage in the design, implementation and evaluation of support measures.

A comprehensive strategy to prevent early school leaving and better integrate NEETs requires the exploitation of territorial opportunities. For example, La Réunion could consider developing stronger economic sectors such as the blue economy and the agri-food sector. Its geographical location in the Indian Ocean could also provide specific opportunities for new jobs.

While many measures for taking care of NEETs are already in place, more efforts should address the ones in danger of becoming school leavers during early school years, before those persons leave school and might be difficult to identify and motivate to get back into vocational pathways.