Editorial: conceptualising Early School Leaving

Editorial: conceptualising Early School Leaving

Alistair Ross & Carole Leathwood

A video abstract of this article can be viewed at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEFSZYaNbzk

This issue of the European Journal of Education focuses on European policyresponses to the current economic malaise in the area of education. In particular,the EU, the Commission, and various national governments have seized on theissue of Early School Leaving and prioritised this as the key contribution thateducation can make to address ‘the crisis’.

The November 2012 communication from the Commission Rethinking Educa-tion: Investing in skills for better socio-economic outcomes (European Commission,2012) is the more recent and most striking exposition of the neo-liberal agenda foreducation: remarkable, in the sense that rarely before has the link between arationale for investment in education been so explicitly made to explain that thiswill lead to economic growth.The most pressing mission of education, we are told,‘is to address the needs of the economy and focus on solutions to tackle fast-risingyouth unemployment’ (p. 2). We are to ‘deliver the right skills for employment,increasing the efficiency and inclusiveness of our education’. ‘Improving the per-formance of student groups with high risk of early school leaving and low basicskill’ is highlighted as a priority for Member States (p. 14).

The assumption appears to be that there is a causal relationship between thealarming levels of youth unemployment and early school leaving.This is challengedby all the contributors to this issue of the Journal.What exactly is meant by ‘EarlySchool Leaving’? Figure 1 shows (in the numbered parts of the diagram) the wayin which UNESCO (2011) had standardised the classification and description ofthe various educational stages. Although many of the stages are cumulative andsequential, Level 4 represents post-secondary, pre-tertiary education that allowsvarious routes into different forms of tertiary education and into employment, andalso includes adult education and training.

In the EU context, an early school leaver generally refers to a person aged 18 to24 who has finished no more than lower secondary education, with the numberbeing expressed as a percentage of the total population aged 18 to 24 (Eurostat nd).Early school leavers have thus completed only Levels 1, 2 and 3c short — thecompulsory levels — but they might not have acquired any qualifications. Theymight, however, have entered some form of occupational or vocational training afterleaving Level 2. The definitions used by the US and the OECD illustrate this indifferent ways: in the US, Early School Leavers are those who do not graduate fromHigh School (Level 3), in the OECD they are 20–24 year olds with education belowupper secondary education level (Level 3). The EU definition reflects a range ofnational definitions, embedded within each are quite distinct preoccupations(GHK, 2005; Psacharopoulos, 2007). As de Witte et al. point out in this issue (pp.331–345), data are collected on those who leave formal education after 2/short 3c(ELFE), and those who do this and are also not in education or training (ELET).

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European Journal of Education, Vol. 48, No. 3, 2013

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The imprecision in data definition in many countries is highlighted in severalarticles in this issue. Cederberg and Hartsmar (pp. 378–389) show wildly varyingstatistics for drop out rates in Sweden, depending on whether one is looking atthose who do not complete training in the school system or those who do notcomplete training in the adult education system. Doolan and Jugovic (pp. 363–377) question the reliability of statistical collection in the Western Balkans, and deWitte et al. question the basis of the Commission’s definition.

Perhaps more significant are the challenges to the assumption that early schoolleavers are themselves in some ways the cause of the problem. If the individuals canbe ‘treated’ in some way, then they will reform and stay longer in education. Thisobjectification of the early school leaver is one of the major concerns of Downes (pp.346–362), who argues powerfully that students in the process lack voice — andindeed, that it is this very lack of voice that alienates some young people from theeducational system and leads to them quitting education at the earliest opportunity.

Vajello and Dooley (pp. 390–404) also argue effectively that there are strongsocio-economic factors that predispose particular groups to become early schoolleavers. The hegemonic practices of the political and educational elite prioritisethose students with particularly recognised cultural capital, consigning the rest tounqualified status and poorly-paid work — if any is available. Cederberg andHartsmar and Doolan and Jugovic — writing from very different European cultures— make the same points respectively about migrants and Roma young people.

1Primary

2Lower Secondary

2AGeneral, academic

2BPre-voca�onal

2CVoca�onal

3Upper Secondary3A

3B

3CVoca�onal

5Ter�ary

5A(1st and 2nd cycle)

5B

4

4Post Secondary non-ter�ary

Occupa�onal

6Research qualifica�on

4 Adult non-ter�ary educa�on

Re�rement

i. Employment (full-�me,part

ii. Self-employment (paid, unpaid; full-�me, part-�me)

iii. Unemployed seeking employment (under-employed, wholly unemployed)

iv. Unemployed not seeking work (private means, alterna�ve life-style, etc)

v. Voluntary work (full-�me, part-�me)

-�me)

Increasing age

FIGURE 1. Schematic potential stages in education and post-educationNotes: Numbered sections (eg 1, 2A; mostly to the left) indicate stages of educa-tion, following the UNESCO International Standard Descriptors of Education(2012). Broken horizontal lines indicate segmentation of the stage, and theseboundaries have varying degrees of permeability, depending on local nationalsystems. The Roman numerals (i, ii, iii {) indicate potential post-education activi-ties. While most individuals move through some of these sections in a sequentialmanner early in their life, the post-education activities may be simultaneouslycombined in various ways (eg i and iii together, both part-time), and also beinterspersed by (more) educational activities, generally from levels 4, 5 and 6.

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In the final article, Ross and Leathwood (pp. 405–418) analyse in greater depththe relationship between early school leaving and social disadvantage. This, wesuggest, should be the principal reason for addressing the issue of ESL: not that itwill necessarily lead to less youth unemployment, still less that it will ‘solve’ theEuropean needs for a skilled labour force — but that it maintains and accentuatessocial inequality and injustice.

Part II begins with an article by Nilani Ljunggren De Silva on Inclusive Peda-gogy in Light of Social Justice. It analyses special educators’ understanding of theinclusive and exclusive practice (epistemology), the context in which they function(practice) and the challenges they face when applying inclusive and exclusivepractices. By raising questions that encourage special educators to describe positiveand negative experiences that they have encountered when teaching pupils withSEN, she expects to identify norms, habits and discursive practices that haveworked as barriers, constraints and possibilities when creating an inclusive educa-tional landscape.

In the second article, Susanne Strauss and Kathrin Leuze argue that in times ofrapid technological and organisational change lifelong further education becomesmore and more important for labour market success. Especially in labour marketsegments for the highly qualified, it is essential to constantly update one’s quali-fications.This is reflected in the finding that graduates with tertiary education areclosely involved in further training measures at the beginning of their life courses.The further education strategies of higher education graduates, however, varygreatly in terms of frequency of participation, duration of measures, financing ofthe measure and the type of skills acquired. Using a German graduate panel whichtraces a sample of graduates up to five years after they obtained their degree in1997 (HIS Absolventenpanel), they analyse which of these strategies are mostsuccessful in terms of wages.

The last article by Veiga et al. analyses the impacts of the Portuguese qualityassurance system on academic cultures, using the Cultural Theory proposed byDouglas and developed by Thompson, Ellis and Wildavsky as an explanatoryframework for preference of Portuguese academics’ formation in relation to qualityassessment. The Portuguese higher education system has been moving from atraditional collegial system to a legal framework influenced by New Public Man-agement. Recent legislation has decreased the influence of the group dimension byfavouring individualistic values and beliefs. It has also reinforced the grid dimen-sion through greater centralisation of power and separation of roles of universitiesand polytechnics, thus promoting the hierarchic way of life. The new legislationframework has produced changes that have strongly modified traditional govern-ance structures and mechanisms and are likely to affect academics’ perceptions ofquality assurance processes and impacts as much as they influence the develop-ment of beliefs and values.

Alistair Ross, Institute of Policy Studies in Education, London Metropolitan University,166-220 Holloway Road, London N7 8DB, UK, [email protected],www.londonmet.ac.uk/research-units/ipse/staff/alistair-ross.cfmCarole Leathwood, Institute of Policy Studies in Education, London MetropolitanUniversity, 166-220 Holloway Road, London N7 8DB, UK, [email protected], www.londonmet.ac.uk/research-units/ipse/staff/carol-leathwood.cfm

Alistair Ross & Carole Leathwood 329


REFERENCES

EUROPEAN COMMISSION (2012) Rethinking Education: Investing in skills forbetter socio-economic outcomes — COM 669, Strasbourg, EuropeanCommission.

EUROSTAT (nd) Glossary: early school leaver from education and training. http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/statistics_explained/index.php/Glossary:Early_school_leaver

GHK (2005) Study on Access to Education andTraining, Basic Skills and Early SchoolLeavers:Final Report, DG EAC 38/04, Brussels: DG EAC, http://ec.europa.eu/education/pdf/doc284_en.pdf

PSACHAROPOULOS, G. (2007) The Costs of School Failure: A Feasibility Study,Analytical Report for the European Commission prepared by the EuropeanExpert Network on Economics of Education (EENEE)

UNESCO (2011) Revision of the International Standard Classification of Education(ICSED). Paper 36C, General Conference, 36th session, Paris, 5 September2011.

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Documents

Editorial: conceptualising Early School Leaving