Spain leads the European Union in school failure, with a rate of 21.9% of young people between 18 and 24 years old who have prematurely abandoned the education system, having completed at most the first cycle of secondary education. This percentage doubles the community average (11.1%) and is still very far from the goal of reducing school dropout to 15% by 2020, according to a report published in March 2015 by Eurostat. And it is that, although the premature dropout rate has been reduced from 30.3% registered in 2006 to 23.6% in 2013 and 21.9% in 2014, dropout figures remain very high.
But… Why does a student decide to abandon their studies (school dropout)? What is behind their decision? What makes them give up? School dropout is not an individual decision; it is conditioned by factors that are not only personal but also contextual. It has been found that the main reasons why students have stopped studying are:
Boredom and characteristics of boys/girls: the appeal of video games and technological devices is far superior to the knowledge offered by textbooks. Furthermore, a high percentage of school failure cases are due to difficulties such as dyslexia, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), or vision or hearing problems. It is essential to detect these causes in time so that the student does not start to fall behind their peers. We still hear expressions like “you’re lazy” or “you’re not cut out for studying” when faced with these problems.
Economic problems: the lack of money to continue middle and higher education causes students to abandon their formative stage prematurely or not be able to fully develop their potential.
Family recognition: if the value of education is not recognized in families, it will be difficult for the student to appreciate it, and therefore, early dropout is more likely compared to families where education is valued and given the importance it deserves.
Self-esteem and self-confidence: those with good academic performance have a positive opinion of themselves and their abilities as students. Conversely, the student who fails builds a negative perception of their academic capabilities and possibilities. The attitudes and beliefs students have about themselves in school are decisive and powerful for their academic success.
Lack of guidance: teachers and counselors almost always have more students than they can properly attend to, and many parents are very busy with their jobs, so ensuring the continuity of their children’s studies can become a difficult task and a real dilemma. Continuous teacher training, the completion of specializations in pedagogy, would help improve this aspect.
Stress: attending classes, doing homework, and participating in extracurricular activities are too many demands. Many boys and girls have trouble keeping up with the rigorous pace of their studies.
School bullying: in cases of harassment or bullying it is very important for parents and teachers to detect it early and adopt appropriate measures.
Apathy and lack of motivation: often, students lack inspiration and motivation. The “culture of effort” is little considered in our society; both friends and the social environment in which the student moves can influence them to abandon their studies prematurely. Furthermore, lately with the crisis and high unemployment rates, many students do not see a university degree as useful for finding a job, but rather prefer to directly enter the workforce and start earning money.
Learning environment: the relationship with teachers or the lack of resources and support in schools can also be some of the reasons that motivate students to drop out of school. They do not fully adapt to the school environment.
Failures in the education system: sometimes, the education system does not precisely help many students to achieve better grades. Reducing the high rates of school failure in Spain has always been an objective of successive governments, which have approved various laws to reform the education system to this day.
Most students are losing interest in their studies and are content with the little they earn in their first jobs.
Furthermore, with the current evaluation system, students are being prepared to pass exams but are not being prepared for life, which is what is truly important. Learning is not passing exams. The best student cannot be “the best repeater of what the teacher says.” Through ISEP’s training programs for educators, we invite our students to have critical and analytical thinking about current educational policies and to contribute their bit to modify the education system from the classrooms and not the offices.
Oscar González, primary education teacher and author of the book “365 proposals for educating,” proposes some strategies to reduce school failure. Knowing what other professionals contribute is necessary to initiate both personal and professional change:
1. A truly continuous and comprehensive evaluation, which considers not only the results of a test or exam and is applied to the real learning context. This can be achieved by evaluating through various types of tests: self-evaluation, peer evaluation, etc. In this way, the student is at all times a “constructor” of their own learning, and the teacher’s role is not to evaluate and assign a grade but to empower the student and serve as a guide in this process. There is already a center working along these lines in our country with an educational method imported from Harvard.
2. All the knowledge we can acquire is useless if we are then “emotionally illiterate,” incapable of showing our feelings to others, of putting ourselves in others’ shoes, etc. We live in an excessively competitive society, and it is precisely for this reason that we need to educate our children and students to grow emotionally healthy. Educate them to compete not against others but against themselves: the challenge is not to be the best but to be better than yesterday. Let’s educate for strengths: that they learn to tolerate frustration, to know how to wait, to know how to win, and to handle life’s defeats and setbacks. That is the essence of education. If we educate them to be the best, we will be perpetuating the society we have today, where anything goes to be first, where the end always justifies the means.
3. Homework, yes, but with caveats. It’s not about eliminating them 100%; the ideal would be to start them at school and allocate time to finish them there. If this doesn’t happen, the child shouldn’t spend more than half an hour doing them (in primary school). It is necessary for there to be coordination among teachers so that there isn’t an accumulation of tasks that prevents the child from having time to play, do extracurricular activities, etc.
The Master’s in Therapeutic Pedagogy will allow you to design intervention strategies so that students with learning difficulties, behavioral problems, or lack of motivation can give their best.