Estrategias de prevención de la deserción en la Educación Secundaria: perspectiva latinoamericana

Authors

Viola Espínola HoffmannSalto de línea Juan Pablo Claro Stuardo Salto de línea Universidad Diego Portales. Facultad de Educación. Santiago. Chile.

Abstract

School dropout prevention strategies for Secondary Education: Latin American perspective

In Latin America, the percentage of students that leave secondary school without graduating is high and involves sigificant costs for the students, their families and their countries. Surprisingly, many countries have not paid the necessary attention to secondary school dropout, which mainly affects poor students. Strategies to prevent dropout are ineffective and dropout rates not only don´t drop but tend to increase. The case of Chile is used in this article as a reference to analyse the weaknesses and faults of implemented policies and alternative policy options recommended as promising by the literature are discussed. They are based on the decentralization of responsibilities and decisions to the local level administration and on the coordinated action of all stakeholders involved, including communities and families. The article highlight the magnitude of the secondary dropout problem and proposes policy options that may lead to a gradual increase of the percentage of students that finish school and thus, face better options for their future.

Keywords

Education policy, secondary education, school dropout, prevention strategies.