To deal with school failure, countries should prioritise policy approaches focusing on prevention, instead of compensation and intervention.
Prevention refers to policy measures that support the effective implementation of inclusive education and aim to prevent school failure before it emerges (for example, legislation promoting a rights-based approach, avoiding disabling policies that lead to gaps in provision, lack of qualifications, etc.).
Intervention refers to policy measures that support the effective implementation of inclusive education and aim to reduce school failure while or after it emerges (for example, the existence of clear policies leading to school development and high-quality flexible support systems for mainstream education).
Compensation refers to policy measures that address the inability of legislation and/or provision to deal with school failure after it emerges (for example, separate education programmes or provision, support for low-performing schools, second-chance education programmes).
(Adapted from European Agency, 2018)
According to the Preventing School Failure (PSF) project conceptual framework, compensatory policy actions and measures should be a last resort. Countries should prioritise preventive approaches (p. 24).
Project findings and outputs from the PSF project can be found in the project web area.