In 2005 about 6 million young people in Europe left education prematurely, having no more than lower secondary education. These fi gures illustrate that school absenteeism and student dropouts have become a growing concern for European societies. The Comenius School Partnership “Dropouts? Not in my school!” addressed a current European problem. The main aim of this partnership was to develop means to identify the potential dropout students and to develop and share preventive measures. Based on a statistical survey of all dropout students during the project’s lifetime partners analysed the main variables which caused students to drop out of school. The results were brought to the attention of school authorities and motivated them to do something about it. In a second step the partnership discussed and developed preventive measures for dropouts. The Icelandic partner school created a new course on study methods and school authorities started to take into consideration the impact of class size and composition on dropout rates. They try to keep the classes small in order to enable a better counselling of each student. For each student clear learning goals and regulations for attendance and discipline are identifi ed. A group of experienced teachers meets once a week and discusses each student’s progress. In case of need students can get additional help in support classes and do their homework under supervision. Also the parents shall be involved more closely in supporting their children. Towards the end of the year the students receive career counselling so that they can decide what their next steps should be. The four schools participating in this partnership successfully treated a diffi cult problem in their own environments and showed that there are practical possibilities to at least reduce the number of early school leavers.