1. Schools cannot work alone to disrupt intergenerational cycles of deprivation and tackle educational disadvantage. A combination of factors beyond schools limits educational opportunities and life chances. 2. This means that cross-sector strategies are required, to link what schools can do with what other sectors such as employment, health, finance, justice, housing, youth and welfare can offer. 3. The complexity of vulnerability calls for more systemic, "ecological" responses which involve interventions in families and communities alongside help for children and young people. 4. Difficult as they may be for policy makers, coordinated, multi-strand approaches sustained consistently over time may offer the best approach to preventing or mitigating the impact of multiple and cumulative disadvantage on people's educational experiences and life chances. 5. That these responses should be closely linked to schools, the only universal service where the wellbeing of children and young people can be regularly monitored would seem a wise step towards achieving universal inclusion. 6. Preventative multi-service interventions in and around schools are easiest to achieve if backed by national policies that promote inter-sectoral synergies from policy, through implementation to delivery. These synergies need to overcome strong historical boundaries between different services and professions. 7. Policy-led co-location of the different services is not sufficient. Efforts are needed to support genuine interprofessional collaborations at the point of service delivery. 8. Some EU Member States have moved some way towards such an approach, often as part of their early school leaving prevention strategies or overall lifelong learning strategies, and have established multi-service collaborations where professionals with different areas of responsibility work together to support disadvantaged children and adults. 9. This review has examined synergies across policy fields and in multi-professional partnerships, at local and regional levels in Europe, which aim at articulating interventions with education and training. It has attempted to: a) identify examples of multi-service interventions where there is robust evidence of successful outcomes for disadvantaged children and young people; and b) reveal the conditions for success. 10. The LSB teams (Learning and Behavioural Support Teams) in the Netherlands, the "Team around the Child" initiative in the UK and the "Social Workers in Schools" in Sweden are successful, innovative examples of such multi-professional synergies created in and around education. These all focus primarily on helping children to be prepared to take advantage of schooling. 11. Other interventions such as the Bildungsoffensive Elbinseln (Elbe Island Training Offensive) in Hamburg, the One Square Kilometre of Education in Berlin or OnTrack in England, include schools as important partners in wider "ecological" attacks on deprivation. Others, such as some extended or community schools in Belgium and England are based in schools and offer enrichment experiences to children and families. 12. Cross-sectoral approaches are likely to make their greatest contribution within the context of a holistic and equitable view of education as being about holistic and equitable learner development. 13. Cross-sectoral approaches and inter-professional collaborations are easier to establish with statist or directive forms of governance (in which services are provided directly by the state, national and/or local) than with more delegated modes which rely mainly on monitoring. 14. Such approaches do not necessarily demand additional resources so much as that existing resources are used in a different way. Therefore, they can either save costs or free up existing resources for dealing with a wider range of issues thus contributing to "smart spending". 15. Funding for cross-sectoral approaches should be considered a priority in the effort to reach the Europe 2020 target of 10% early school leaving across the EU. 16. Such multi-faceted approaches must not be sacrificed simply because they are harder to evaluate. They need national or regional support and funding commitment and take time before outcomes can be produced as evidence of success. 17. Single-service and longer-term systemic multi-strand approaches can be complementary. The Familiscope in Ireland is a good example. 18. Responsive changes in practices in and around schools are necessarily sensitive to local conditions, making simple generalisations from interventions about what works difficult. Attention should therefore be paid to the principles and values underpinning interventions. 19. A robust overarching conceptual framework is urgently needed to help shape the development of national policies for active inclusion. Such a framework can usefully guide the work of schools with vulnerable young people: it can bring national policies from different sectors into alignment, facilitate crosssectoral work at local level, and help monitor its outcomes in appropriate ways. Such a framework cannot and should not be over-prescriptive, but it can give administrations and practitioners in Member States a set of conceptual tools for thinking about how cross-sectoral approaches might be developed in their contexts.