The Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport has competences in these different three areas: Education, Culture and Sports. Regarding education, its competences are coordinated by the State Secretariat of Education, Training, Vocational training and University. This State Secretariat is composed by three General Directorates: Directorate General of Evaluation and Territorial Cooperation, Directorate General of Vocational Training and Directorate General of University Policy.
The Directorate General involved in the Project is Directorate General of Vocational Training (VET) and it’s composed by three Sub Directorates: Sub Directorate of Guidance, Vocational Education and Training, Sub Directorate for Lifelong Learning and National Institute of Qualifications.
The second one (Sub Directorate for Lifelong Learning) is the one involved directly in this project.
The General Sub Directorate for Lifelong Learning develops activities to improve formal and non formal education for adult people and to fight against early school leaving. For this last action this Sub Directorate undertakes different plans and measures of specific pathways of intervention:
 Campaigns of awareness, directed both to social stakeholders, teachers, students and their families.
 Establishment of concrete strategies in schools to identify students at risk of school drop-out and measures expressly aimed to achieve school success of students such as strengthening actions of the departments of orientation and academic monitoring and support programs.
 Measures for the guidance and follow-up to recover students who have left the education system:
a- Units for guidance in monitoring and support of young people between 16 and 24 years, by means of the centres of adult education and local corporations to facilitate their re-entry into the system.
b- Cooperation agreements with entities and other institutions for the realization of specific projects (classrooms of leisure activities and healthy leisure, pre-employment workshops, etc.), in areas of greater risk of social exclusion and dropouts, that promote the recruitment of these young people and their reintegration into the education system.
c- Educational offers for young people who left the education system, aimed to obtain training and formal qualifications of post-compulsory secondary education.

The Sub Directorate General for Lifelong Learning has the following functions in relation to the project:
a- Design, elaboration, implementation, assessment and dissemination of the training course for professionals involved in dealing with people who have abandoned the educational system.
b- The compilation of researches, technical papers and reports related to Early School Leaving and preparation of a summary with the most important facts related with this topic and dissemination among the project partners and the different stakeholders at national level.

Team involved in the project

Maria Jesús del Río Alcalde
Deputy General for lifelong learning, Psychopedagogy degree, experience as a teacher and counsellor in primary and secondary education, teacher, parents and students trainer, head of counsellor team.

Jesús Valdecantos Campos
Head of Service for Adult Learning Department and co-coordinator for European Programmes and expert and Technical Adviser for the European Programmes.
Coordinator in the European Programmes of the Project “Implementation of the European Agenda for Adult Learning 2012-2014 ”
National Coordinator for Adult Learning.

Joaquín González Gigosos
Head of Aula Mentor department for the MECD
Position: Head of the open training - classroom Mentor - Ministry of education, culture and sport
Activities:
1. Coordination of Adult Education Training Programs
2. Design and management of platforms for educational distance learning with information and communication technologies.
3. Coordination of management, administration and teaching teams in the “Aula Mentor”. Coordination of institutional relationships with international, national, regional and local educational administrations as well as with working groups.

Maria Soledad Jimenez Benedit
Technical Educational Advisor for the General Directorate for VET.
Guidance counsellor. Coordinator of National and International Projects. Trainer of educational teams. Didactic materials writer.

Nuria Dominguez de Mora
Technical Counselor for the Ministry of Education Culture and Sport (MECD).
Expert in European Education programmes. Long experience in International education and school management.