A bridge to education across Denmark

The project “Brobygning til Uddannelse” (Building a bridge to education) has given so many good results that it will now become part of Denmark’s future employment measures. 3,000 youths have taken part in the project, financed by the Danish Agency for Labour Market and Recruitment (STAR). Preliminary results show four in five young people who have been taking part felt the programme was relevant and a sufficient push to make them move forward with their lives.

The results are so promising that the government and STAR wants Danish vocational schools and job centres to set up bridging programmes based on the model used in the project. 19 million Danish kroner (€2.5m) have been set aside to help vocational schools and job centres get started, and a tool has been developed for this purpose, says Jens Erik Zebis at STAR.

“We have good reason to believe that this works,” said Jens Erik Zebis as he presented the project at the conference on how to fight youth unemployment, organised by the Danish government and the Nordic Council of Ministers on 25 March in Copenhagen.

The project is aimed at young unemployed people between 18 and 29 who receive unemployment benefits, which means not the strongest but not the most vulnerable youths. Zebis calls the project’s aim “ultra ambitious”. The success criteria is that people in the target group, who often have both skills and social challenges, not only start an education but that they finish it too. And they cannot do this without help.

The project is not yet over and has not been evaluated, which means there still is no hard evidence that it works. But a mid-term evaluation provides very clear indicators, says Jens Erik Zebis. Among the group of youths who have been part of the project, ten percent more start an education compared to youths who have not been part of the project. 10 out of 12 of the project’s sub-projects have achieved significant results. 

The project’s most important tools have been mentor support, education, apprenticeship support and to get young people into vocational training. Jens Erik Zebis highlights the mentor role as a key factor for the project’s success:

“There are indicators that mentors for this group of people is the way to go. Giving a young person one hour’s mentor help a week has a significant and positive effect — especially for those who have left basic education with poor grades.”

There is a great need for measures that actually work: Nearly 40,000 young Danes on unemployment benefit lack a professional education. This means 90 to 95 percent of all people under 30 on unemployment benefits have not finished a professional education. This is a challenge for the government, which aims to get 95 percent of all youths to finish a youth education.