The first event has taken place in the Agency’s work with the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Structural Reform Support (DG REFORM) and the French Ministry of National Education and Youth’s Directorate-General for School Education (Direction Générale pour l’Enseignement Scolaire).
The latest in a series of on-going activities within the Commission’s Technical Support Instrument (TSI), the Agency and DG REFORM will support the Ministry in developing and monitoring a digital tool for inclusive education. Launched in 2021 and progressively deployed across the French territory in 2022, the Livret de Parcours Inclusif (LPI – inclusive course booklet) is an app that gathers information on learners’ specific support measures. The app will allow easy communication between teachers, health care professionals and other specialists and staff involved in the education of vulnerable learners, along with the learners themselves and their families. This will enable professionals to plan and implement necessary adjustments and adaptations to learners’ education, ensuring more individualised and consistent support for each learner.
The project itself will analyse the strengths and weaknesses of the LPI by consulting with stakeholders. It will also propose a way to monitor the app and develop implementation and training plans to ensure its successful dissemination across France. The project will run over the next two years.
In the kick-off meeting, which took place on 2 December 2022, Ministry representatives welcomed the project and emphasised the need to respond to the huge increase in demand for accommodations in learning. DG REFORM’s Director for Support to Member State Reforms, Nathalie Berger, highlighted the project objectives of reducing inequality among learners and addressing the issue of de‑institutionalisation for learners with disabilities. The Agency team presented the context of inclusive education, including the Prevention-Intervention-Compensation model. They also outlined the LPI project objectives and timeline, and provided information on the activity methodology, which will include qualitative and quantitative analysis alongside workshops with different stakeholders. Finally, inclusive education advisers from the administrative educational regions (Académies), which are responsible for implementing centrally-designed education policy, gave feedback on what worked and what could be improved when implementing the LPI.
During the afternoon, a technical meeting took place to discuss the next steps of the project. Representatives from the Ministry, DG REFORM and the Agency explored the documentation that they will use in the analysis phase and the tools they could use to further involve Académie stakeholders, such as surveys, interviews and visits.
Alongside holding further meetings with the Ministry, in the coming months the Agency will analyse the documentation and the implementation of the LPI across the Académies. The next important milestone is a field visit to various Académies, which is planned for the spring.
More information on the TSI activities, including related outputs and documentation, is available on the Agency’s TSI web area and the Commission’s website.