The educational practice worldwide doesn't adequately promote early school leavers’ learning (Europe 2020). Despite the fact that the education system of Latvia offers evening (shift) schools as a measure to engage such people in learning, in Latvia in the third quarter of 2010 out of the total number of 245.6 thousand inhabitants (aged 18-24) 72.9 thousand did not have secondary education but 30.7 thousand were not engaged in any kind of learning. One of the obstacles preventing adults from returning to school is the discrepancy between the quality of offer provided by the evening (shift) school and the demand the adults can accept. This fact is the key problem that the Ministry of Education and Science of Latvia (MOES) will solve. Due the radical reduction of the number of young people leaving school early word wide this issue is significant also in the ASEM countries and world wide in general.

The collaborative study “Identification of New Challenges and Opportunities of Engaging the Reintegration of Adults (18-24 years) in the Education” managed by the State Education Development Agency of Latvia (ESF project on Support for International Educational Research, Activity 1.2.2.3.2.) and voluntarily supported by ASEM countries is aimed at elaborating evidence-based recommendations for the MOES policy for 2013-2020 to be adapted for local, regional and national conditions.

The objective of the proposed paper is to present the evidence of good practice of second chance education in evening (shift) schools of Latvia related to one of the 4 research questions of the given project: What are the key elements of cultures of support that successfully re-engage young people in education?

Increasingly, literature review (Teese 2000) and studies (e.g. Rossario 2005; Šrankova 2005) show that there is no common reason for school leaving (Dwyer 1996). Other researchers (e.g., McFadden & Minns 2000; Smyth et al. 2000) emphasize that young people have diverse needs. This has enabled a conceptual shift from a deficit approach to addressing young people's unmet needs, to recognizing the diversity in their experiences (e.g., Stokes 2000) as made a significant contribution to this conceptual shift. This is also discussed at length by Dwyer et al. (1998), Smyth et al. (2000) argue that early school leaving is socially constructed, and emphasize that it is a product of the institutions, systems and culture(s) that we create and sustain. Following the earlier work of 'resistance theorists', including Willis (1977), McFadden and Minns (2000) concentrate on 'second-chance education'. Their work is built on the premise that students react to the form rather than the substance of schooling. Considering the fact that the generation of adults (aged 18-24) will constitute the main source of labour in 2020 and the fact that knowledge society demands highly qualified labour for new kind of jobs ( European Commission 2010), young people who dropped out of education and training need to get not only a second chance education opportunities but the new opportunities which address their specific needs and help them to re-gain confidence in learning.

Dwyer, P. (1996). What do we know about non-attenders, Melbourne Studies in Education, 37 (l), May. Dwyer, P., Wyn, J. (1998). Post-compulsory education policy in Australia and its impact on participant pathways and outcomes in the 1990s, Journal of Education Policy, 13 (3), 285-300. European Commission (March 2010). Europe 2020. A European strategy for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth. Available at http://europa.eu/press_room/pdf/complet_en_barroso___007_-_europe_2020_-_en_version.pdf European Commission (November 2010). New skills for new jobs Policy initiatives in the field of education: Short overview of the current situation in Europe.http://eacea.ec.europa.eu/education/eurydice/documents/thematic_reports/125EN.pdf Federighi P., Torlone F. (2010). Low skilled take their qualifications "one step up". Firenze University Press. 122 p. McFadden, M., Minns, G. (2000). First chance, second chance or last chance? Resistance and response to education, British Journal of Sociology of Education, 21 (l). Rossario, M. del, Donrov, В. et al. (2005). The Mongolian Dropout Study. Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia: Mongolian Education Alliance. Šrankova, Z., Kadlečikova, Z. et al. (2005). School dropouts—reasons and consequences. Monitoring of the OSI related centres for education policy. Slovakia: Center for Education Policy. Smyth, J., Hattam, R., Cannon, J. et al. (2000). Listen to me I'm leaving - Harly school having in South Australian secondary schools. Flinders Institute for the Study of Teaching, Department of Education, Training and Employment and Senior Secondary Assessment Board of South Australia. Stokes, H. (2000). Out of education, Department of Education, Employment and Training, Victoria. Teese, R., Polesel, J., О'Brien, K. et al. (2000). Early school leaving: A review of the literature. Australian National Training Authority, Brisbane. Trost, J.E. (1986). Statistically non-representative stratified sampling: A sampling technique for qualitative studies. Qualitative Sociology, Spring 1986, 9 (1), 54-57. Willis, P. (1977). Learning to labour, Saxon House, Farnborough.