LET´S CARE: BUILDING SAFE AND CARING SCHOOLS TO FOSTER EDUCATIONAL INCLUSION AND SCHOOL ACHIEVEMENT

Secure attachment relationships play an important protective role against the intergenerational transmission of social exclusion, not only at early stages, but at all school levels. LET´S CARE aims to comprehensively understand and improve the caring dimension of educational inclusion and school success. The project main objective is to identify determinants affecting student security as a root cause of underachievement, disengagement and school dropout, at 4 different ecological levels: individual, relational, community and political. LET´S CARE will create a theoretical and practical framework to foster Safe Learning, Safe Teaching, Safe Schools and Safe Education in each level as an approach to break the chain of transgenerational transmission of educational and social exclusion. This approach will generate lower rates of school failure, poor learning outcomes and early school leaving. The main proposal breakthrough is based on considering a relational response to educational exclusion and inequality, resulting in a model for understanding the importance of security to address underachievement and early drop out, and a relational approach to inclusive practices at school that will be translated into tools, recommendations and guidelines for action, from ECEC to secondary and Second Chance schools. A multilevel, multistage and intersectional research, exploring different European educational contexts, will be implemented, including120 schools, 18,000 students, and 2,400 teachers from 6 European countries in 4 schools stages, with special attention to multi-disadvantaged learners. LET´S CARE, supported by a expert consortium, will implement a holistic methodological approach, including cocreation mechanisms, and will translate research findings into political approach, through formulation of novel evidence-based policy recommendations, raising awareness on safe/caring schools, combating social exclusion of disadvantaged learners.