Needs-based funding (also sometimes referred to as ‘input funding’; see Meijer, 1999) is when the funding is based, for example, on the identified need of each of the destination levels, such as the number of learners with special needs in a school, municipality or region. Inputs may also be defined in terms of referral rates, low achievement scores, the number of disadvantaged learners and so on. The key point is that funding is based on the (expressed or measured) needs (European Agency, 2018d).

The acronym NEET refers to young people who are neither in employment nor in education and training. The NEET population has its own definitional variations, as official policies switch between counting certain age groups (Furlong, 2006). According to Eurostat (no date b), the term includes young people aged 20–34, who meet two conditions:

• they are not employed — in other words, they are unemployed or economically inactive;
• they are not receiving any (formal or non-formal) education or training.

OECD data (2021) indicates that young people who are NEET are ‘at risk of becoming socially excluded – individuals with income below the poverty-line and lacking the skills to improve their economic situation’.

Education that is institutionalized, intentional and planned by an education provider. The defining characteristic of non-formal education is that it is an addition, alternative and/or a complement to formal education within the process of the lifelong learning of individuals. … Non-formal education mostly leads to qualifications that are not recognized as formal qualifications by the relevant national educational authorities or to no qualifications at all (UNESCO Institute for Statistics, no date).

An official decision leads to a child/learner being recognised as eligible for additional educational support to meet their learning needs.

An official decision meets the following criteria:

• There has been some form of educational assessment procedure involving different people. This procedure may involve the child/learner, parents, school-based team members, as well as professionals from multi-disciplinary teams from outside the child/learner’s (pre-)school.
• There is some form of legal document (plan/programme, etc.) that describes the support the child/learner is eligible to receive, which is used as the basis for decision-making.
• There is some form of regular review process of the child/learner’s needs, progress and support (European Agency, 2021a, p. 8).

Online learning is defined as learning that takes place using digital technology to connect different devices and to facilitate interaction between the learner and teachers, trainers or other educational staff, or other learners, aimed at obtaining learning content or other information to achieve the objectives of learning programmes (Council of the European Union, 2021, p. 12).

Open educational resources (OER) are teaching, learning and research materials in any medium – digital or otherwise – that reside in the public domain or have been released under an open license that permits no-cost access, use, adaptation and redistribution by others with no or limited restrictions. OER form part of ‘Open Solutions’, alongside Free and Open Source software (FOSS), Open Access (OA), Open Data (OD) and crowdsourcing platforms (UNESCO, 2021b).

‘Available for everyone to use’ (Cambridge Dictionary).

According to the Agency’s Open Access Policy, open-access refers to content that is digital, available online, free to access and free of most usage restrictions. The goal of open access is to provide resources to everyone who can benefit from them.

In the Agency context, users are free to access, use and disseminate open-access resources with appropriate credit to the Agency. However, users may not modify or translate these resources without the Agency’s approval.

‘Open-source software is free to use, and the original program can be changed by anyone’ (Cambridge Dictionary).

In the context of Agency work, users are free to access, use, modify and disseminate open-source materials with appropriate credit to the Agency. This includes publications intended for practical use, such as self-review tools. See the Agency’s Open Access Policy for more information.

School leaders play a critical role in implementing inclusive policy and practice and, in particular, in creating a school culture that embraces diversity and promotes inclusion (Cherkowski and Ragoonaden, 2016; Mac Ruairc, 2013). Thus, school leaders are responsible for maintaining a school culture that is collegial, interactive and focused on supporting teachers and learners throughout the educational process. Setting the tone for an inclusive culture requires school leaders to place emphasis on nurturing teacher morale, partnerships with parents and professional collegiality. This will then affect the learning environment created for learners (Fultz, 2017).

Using human and financial resources strategically and aligning them with pedagogical purposes can influence the way school activities improve teaching and learning. Thus, school leaders must be involved in decisions regarding teacher recruitment. Being able to select teaching staff is central to establishing a school culture and capacity that has a beneficial effect on learners’ achievement (Stoll and Temperley, 2010).

Within the EASIE data collection, this refers to children/learners who should, by law, be in some form of recognised education, but who are out of any recognised form of education. A form of education is any type of education provided by any educational provider in the public or private sector.

The literature on national-level work shows that different terms are used across and within countries to refer to out-of-school: not enrolled, drop-out, early school leavers and not in education, employment or training (NEET) are some, but not all, in evidence. In addition, there is ambiguity around the notion of absenteeism. A learner’s transition from being ‘absent from school’ to formally ‘dropping out’ is rarely clearly defined in research or data collection.

Within work linked to Sustainable Development Goal 4, UNESCO has developed the following working definitions for:

• Out-of-school children: ‘Children in the official primary school age range who are not enrolled in either primary or secondary school’.
• Out-of-school adolescents and youth: ‘Those of lower or upper secondary school age who are not enrolled in primary, secondary, post-secondary non-tertiary or tertiary education’ (UNESCO, 2018, p. 356).

Being considered out-of-school is most often linked to a learner’s age in relation to compulsory education, and their access to, enrolment in and participation in some form of educational provision.

The COVID-19 crisis in education will probably reshape the notions of ‘out of school’ and ‘drop out’. School closures, moves towards distance and blended teaching and learning methods and the rise in home schooling have implications for access to education and access to an inclusive education for a growing number of learners.

In this funding model, funds are allocated on the basis of output: for example, in terms of the number of referred learners (the lower the number, the more funds) or achievement scores (added value: the higher the achievement scores, the more funds). The output can be defined on the basis of different aggregation levels. An output-based system generates behaviour towards achieving the desired results. An output model may reinforce the referral of learners with expected low gains in achievement scores to other parts of the system (Meijer, 1999, pp. 152–153).

‘Something that a person, or an organisation produces. Information/results produced by a computer’ (Oxford Learner’s Dictionaries).

Inclusive education systems are most effectively supported by a complementary combination of prevention, intervention and compensation policy actions. The goal of inclusive education systems is supported by policy actions that are aimed at:

• Prevention – policy initiatives that aim to avoid educational exclusion and longer-term social exclusion, before these issues emerge (for example, anti-discrimination legislation promoting a rights approach, avoidance of disabling policies that lead to gaps in provision, lack of qualifications, etc.).
• Intervention – policy initiatives that support the effective implementation of inclusive education (for example, the existence of clear policies leading to high-quality flexible support systems for mainstream education).
• Compensation – policy initiatives that address the inability of legislation and/or provision to support meaningful inclusive education for all learners (for example, separate educational programmes or provision, support for failing schools, second-chance educational programmes) (European Agency, 2018, p. 19).

‘Partial integration’ means that some learners are partially educated in a mainstream class (for subjects mastered through mainstream programmes) and partially educated in a special class (for subjects mastered through intensified teaching or special programmes). Here, the learner belongs to a mainstream class, with the special class offering regular sessions for some form of special programme (European Agency, 2019b, p. 22).

(See also ‘Integration’)