For many decades, more than four, the expression academic failure has been heard in Spain, and although it can fall into an emptying of content through repetition, it is impossible due to our reality with tangible data and human, labor and economic consequences, to avoid how current it is in us. To date, around a third of our students fail to complete the mandatory academic cycle of our educational system with the attainment of an ESO degree.
Equally worrying, considering the demands of the new labor market and its need for specialized and qualified personnel, is school dropout, which refers to those who finish compulsory education but do not continue studying after secondary education. It is true that since the beginning of this century Spain has improved significantly, going from dropout rates above 30% to the latest figure in 2020 of 16%. Significantly more men (20.3%) than women (11.6%) abandon their studies and training, information obtained by the EPA in 2020.
Just hearing the word failure generates a sound in our ears that leads us to a feeling of rupture. It comes from the Italian “fracassare” (failure) and in turn from the Latin “frangere” (to break, to burst).
In Spain, the concept of academic failure began to be established with the technocratic law of Villar Palasí of 1970, since with this revolutionary innovation for the time, a substantial change was generated, giving access to the schooling of all children of all social classes. Compulsory education reaches up to fourteen years of age with the LGE, with the obtaining of the School Graduate and the popularized option of continuing with BUP or with Professional Training. This concludes with the tradition of the unitary classroom, with the double track, that is, literacy for the poor up to ten, eleven years, destined to do cheap labor jobs and that of the young people of middle and upper class suitable for higher education.
It also moves away from the denominations of “school retardate” and “maladjusted”, in force until the 1960s and focused on singular children and not on the system. The first concept, usually referring to children with possible cognitive difficulties and other learning problems unknown at that time, and the second, to minors who even “being not only smart, but very smart (perhaps current AACC), did not adjust to the school and to obtain results”.
With the recognition of the “minimum credential” School Graduate, came the association of academic failure vs success. Considering that it is only an article and it is necessary to limit its extension, in the same way that the emergence of the middle social class or the migratory changes led to the need for an education for all in the 70s, the social in continuous evolution of the following decades led to the educational reform of the 90s (LOGSE) and the educational obligation until sixteen, improving and evolving the Professional Cycles in the attempt to respond to the labor market.
Since the OECD began in the 90s with the PISA study, our country periodically receives a call for attention for its poor results and perhaps we can interpret it as a touch that shows us the need to immerse ourselves fully to solve the educational difficulties of our minors.
Causes of academic failure and school dropout
The causes of failure and abandonment are multiple and also interact with each other, but to have a reference we will say that they revolve around three axes: the social and family, that of the educational system and those focused on the student. The minor carries all of them on “his back”, either to favor him for his good combination or to harm him.
It is evident, in principle, that we would be with a very high probability of touching school success in the case of a student:
- socially comfortable,
- with a structured family with good economic and cultural situation,
- with social support,
- who attends educational centers with suitable preparation of their teachers and involvement of them, with innovative methodology…
- and in addition to the above, who is motivated, committed to their learning process,
- with parents who support him with a philosophy of effort and work habit
- and without particular learning difficulties.
But the situation, as we have been observing, is another and at this moment what we can solve more quickly and easily is the early detection, from two years of age, with tools that facilitate the collection of information about the child and from this information to act early.
We can frame four types of academic failure
Primary, which emerges in the early years of schooling and is expected to be resolved with evolutionary maturation. Here it is better to detect and even discard than to perpetuate.
Secondary, which appears a few years after the start of schooling, is characterized because the school years prior to secondary failure are of very good academic results, but as if from nowhere secondary school failure arises accompanied by difficulties and problems. The real obstacle is when the situation is underestimated, relying on the “pseudosolution” of the passage of time. An example would be children with high capacities not perceived, who have lived “to listen” the first years until they “have fainted of boredom” and have lost all interest in school learning.
Circumstantial, which is transient and isolated
Habitual and constant, which has accompanied the child from the beginning and is usually related to problems inherent to the minor (delays, developmental disorders)… It is necessary to attend to students who go through punctual failures as well as to assist from the moment zero to the habitual ones since with the detection they will be able to obtain the support and the appropriate intervention and to be able to promote their possibilities as well as to be able to work with their comorbidities.
The consequences of academic failure and school dropout reach as the expansion of a wave from the micro to the macro to the entire system. Starting with the student who is affected in his self-esteem, in his self-concept and in the lack of confidence in himself and in his future project, whether labor or social. Also the feeling of failure accompanies the students and puts the educational system in the spotlight.
The family worries and anguishes for their children and their future and even give them up for lost. The social and the labor market is impoverished in terms of human and cultural capital. The collision of failure in the words of Quixote is very graphic”…to cleave giants, to rout armies and to wreck navies…”.
Prevention and early detection
At the present time we can not avoid, as in the 50s and 60s of the last century, in the ignorance of the learning difficulties or educational needs in the infant-juvenile stage since, not only can we detect them and put names on them, but also intervene and solve. To solve, always first and foremost, you have to know and know.
With tools like dide , available for professionals and also for families, we can obtain in a simple and non-invasive way a very broad information of the minor in all its areas through 35 indicators. From the results we can act to prevent, to promote and to curb failure and abandonment.
It is possible to stop academic failure and school dropout, let’s start from the base, from the foundations, from the germ of our society that are children, let’s detect from early childhood, we can do it through dide and intervene, there are no buts or cons, they are all pros.
“The simple flutter of a butterfly can change the world”
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