Annual Report 2016, Dublin

NW 05 received over 100 submissions for ECER 2106 and accepted just under 90% of papers. The number of submissions was slightly down in comparison to previous years. In addition to participants from European countries we had researchers from the USA, Hong Kong and Australia.

The nature of submissions changed slightly as we received more quantitative studies of young peoples experiences but fewer accounts of large-scale interventions within cities and countries. Several detailed ethnographic studies were presented and a number of these focussed upon the experiences of refugees, and there was a strong emphasis upon participatory approaches.

Key thematic areas included:

• social exclusion,
• bullying,
• school alienation and drop out,
• multi-agency working and
• transitions.

The sessions were mostly well attended with between 5 and 30 participants per session.

Continuing the trend first identified in Porto more presentations focused upon support structures in schools for at risk children and youth, and on alternative school based programmes than new central or local government policies or major interventions. This trend is indicative of the impact of the Europe wide economic slow down on public expenditure and that many systems are in transition. The move towards increased school based and school-to-school collaborative working was a feature of  a number of papers.