Determinantes del abandono escolar en Cataluña: más allá del nivel socio-económico de las familias

Authors

Antoni Josep Mora Corral Salto de línea Universidad Internacional de Catalunya. Facultad de Económicas y Ciencias Sociales. Barcelona, España.

Abstract

School dropout determinants in Catalonia: beyond family socioeconomic levelSalto de línea Salto de línea The present article evidences the individual characteristics of those Catalan students in secondary education who showing dropping out intentions. DA descriptive and microeconometric analyses are carried out use a new database who allows to go farther than to know in deep other conditioning factors besides the well known effects of : the socioeconomic household level, the gender or the student’s age. The database contains information about 3000 Catalan secondary students belonging to 91 school centres. Specifically, we obtained data regarding : 3rd and 4th ESO students as well as 1st and 2nd of Bachillerato students. It was asked their intention to drop out of school and their reasons. Due to the binary characteristic of this variable, we estimated a logistic model. Throughout the empirical investigation, we show evidence that the student’s personality, measured by the consciousness factor, as well as the cognitive ability, as the student’s personality (measured by consciousness) constitutes the cornerstone of in explaining educational achievements, and, in consequence, of a reduced intention to quit secondary education dropping out decisions. Thus, in our opinion, empirical study approaches should introduce these factors when considering determinant factors. On the other hand, at this juncture, besides the impact of the gender and the parents’ socioeconomic level, other factors become determinant when explaining dropout intentions: self-reported health status, vehicular language, age difference with their mother, satisfaction level in the school, household climate and the number of extracurricular activities it is also necessary to include in the empirical analysis, school fixed effects since these deeply condition pupil’s decisions. Besides gender and socioeconomic effects, other factors become determinant when explaining dropping out intentions: self-reported health status, vehicular language, ageing difference with their mother, satisfaction levels (school centre, household climate) and the number of extracurricular activities. Therefore, there exist appear other determinants affecting students’ decisions on dropout. Future research shouldmight focus on exploring those mechanisms operacting onunder these relations.

Keywords

School dropout, fixed effects, secondary education students, personality, consciousness, non-cognitive skills.