Continue to identify, through research and peer learning, examples of the most effective collaborative practices at school and at local level aimed at alleviating educational disadvantage, reducing early school leaving and ensuring more inclusive education.

Early school-leavers, older workers, the long-term unemployed and young people will benefit from actions with national coverage to support access to jobs, the modernisation of the labour market institutions and the prevention of school drop-out.

However, this development package only supports the population and not public institutions (since the government of Sudan has not ratified the revised version of the Cotonou Agreement, which is the underlying basis of EU cooperation with the country.) EU aid targets the agriculture sector (through provision of technical assistance to help small scale farmers to make a living), the education sector (by training teachers and providing text material to reduce drop-out rates in primary schools) and the health sector (through training of nurses and midwives, the construction of health facilities, and introduction of basic health packages).

STRESSES THE IMPORTANCE of addressing vulnerability factors such as poor school achievement, lack of social and life skills, school dropout, association with antisocial and delinquent activities, self-destructive behavior, aggression, anxiety in their prevention efforts;

If that is so, I would like to know why his government cancelled the Stay-in-School program designed to fight the problem of school dropouts, a problem so important that his own colleague, the Minister of Finance, criticized the Quebec government last summer for not paying enough attention to the problem of school dropouts.

In addition, Mr. Speaker, we hear more and more about high school drop-outs at the Grade 9, 10, 11, and even 12 level. In my riding where there are four school boards, they co-operate to design programs to make primary and secondary schools more cost-effective and interesting and to prevent kids from dropping out of school in every community.