IntroductionIn this final contribution, we problematise the whole notion of ‘early schoolleaving’ (ESL) in European policy. We suggest that the concept of ESL embodiesa rather simplistic generalisation that masks both the nature of educational trajec-tories and the relationship between education and the labour market.
We begin with a critical discussion of the policy rationale for the significance ofESL and then move on to challenge the conceptualisation of educational transi-tions and pathways that are embedded within these policy discussions. This isfollowed by a consideration of the relationship between education and employ-ment. The final section is devoted to a critical discussion, from a social inclusion/equity perspective, of the various strategies that are proposed to address ESL.
Why is Early School Leaving Significant?To understand the significance now being attached to tackling ESL across Europeas part of the Europe 2020 agenda, one must consider the positioning of education,and in particular, lifelong learning, within the Lisbon strategy.The commitment ofthe Lisbon Council in 2000 was to make the EU ‘the most competitive and dynamicknowledge-based economy in the world capable of sustainable economic growthwith more and better jobs and greater social cohesion’ (European Union, 2000). Inthe context of global competitiveness and rapid change, and with the future seen interms of a ‘knowledge economy’, the aim was to generate growth and jobs, withprominence given to developing a highly skilled and ‘flexible’ workforce. Basic andtechnological skills development was emphasised, not only for young people inschool, but also for unemployed adults and those in work who, it is assumed, willneed to re-skill to keep up in this period of rapid global and technological change.This emphasis on the skills needed for the economy, and the reductionism throughwhich education becomes primarily about such skills, have been reinforced in themore recent European Commission Communication on ‘Rethinking Education’.Although there is acknowledgement in this document that ‘the broad mission ofeducation and training encompasses objectives such as active citizenship, personaldevelopment and well-being’ (European Commission, 2012, p. 2), the rest of thetext focuses entirely on what is presented as the urgent need to deliver ‘the right skillsfor employment’. The underpinning assumption is that a skilled workforce willcreate the economic growth Europe is striving for:
Skills determine Europe’s capacity to increase productivity [. . .] skills cantrigger innovation and growth, move production up the value chain, stimulatethe concentration of higher level skills in the EU and shape the future labourmarket (ibid.)
The current economic crisis in Europe and the lack of growth are not, however,caused by the lack of a highly qualified workforce, as we discuss below, withthe number of unemployed graduates across Europe indicative of the lack of
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European Journal of Education, Vol. 48, No. 3, 2013
opportunities in the labour market. Nevertheless, the key rationale for tacklingearly school leaving in the Commission’s Communication specifically on this topicis that ‘early school leaving hinders smart, sustainable and inclusive growth’(European Commission, 2011, p. 2).
Those who leave school early are deemed to lack ‘the right skills for employment’(European Commission, 2012).These include not only basic skills such as literacyand numeracy and the ‘transversal skills’ (e.g. of critical thinking and problemsolving), but also skills in the STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering andmaths), languages and vocational skills. Particular emphasis is placed on entrepre-neurial skills which ‘not only contribute to new business creation but also to theemployability of young people’ (European Commission, 2012, p. 4). Again, the linkis made between skills and the labour market, but the elision from ‘full employment’to ‘employability’ transfers the responsibility for employment from the State to theindividual — in this case to those who leave school early:
Every year, 6 million young Europeans leave school with at best a lowersecondary education. This currently represents 14% of 18–24-year-olds,which in turn fuels high levels of youth unemployment. (EuropeanCommission, 2013, p. 9).
Leaving school early is, at best, irresponsible in this discursive framing, andcertainly not rational, thereby masking wider economic social and cultural condi-tions.Yet as Brown and Hesketh (2004, p. 8) note, the main issue is not individualemployability but ‘a failure to generate enough good jobs’, an observation that iseven more apt in the current culture of austerity. Notions of ‘the right kind of skills’for employment also construct skills as fixed and neutral, rather than sociallyconstructed, with the same skills differently valued depending on who is perform-ing them, in what context and where they were acquired (Blackmore, 1997). AsMorley (2001) argues, the discourse of employability ignores gender, ethnicity,social class and other markers of identity that impact on students’ experience andentry to the labour market. When education and training systems are directed toproduce ‘employable’ subjects, they are also maintaining and reproducing theinequalities of a highly stratified labour market (Leathwood, 2006).
Yet a ‘blame the victims’ mentality is increasingly evident, as can be seen in theUK where austerity politics and cuts to welfare are justified by demonising anyonenot in work as ‘shirkers’, for not trying hard enough to get a job, for refusing towork for free, or for being ill or disabled. At the same time, a myth of ‘generationsof worklessness’ (Shildrick et al., 2012) is being peddled as part of an attack on thepoor.There is evidence of a higher and higher incidence of early school leaving in‘workless’ families (Dale, 2010), but, as Shildrick et al. (2012, p. 37) note, thefinding that over half of their sample had left school with no qualifications ‘high-lights a disappointing, and often exclusionary, experience of an unequal educationsystem, shared across generations, that ‘fails’ working-class people.’
If education and training systems are to be ‘reformed’ to develop ‘the right skillsfor employment’ as outlined in the Commission Communication (EuropeanCommission, 2012), education will become ever more instrumental, with indi-viduals and society the poorer for it. It reflects not only a narrow conceptualisationof education, but also of the needs of labour market and of the strengths andpotential of young people. It also risks (further) alienating those for whom a richerand broader curriculum that stimulates their interests, inspires creativity and
fosters a desire to learn could ensure higher levels of engagement and so help toreduce early school leaving. ESL is significant, but this significance, we wouldargue, needs to be seen in terms of ‘generations of inequality’ being furtherembedded through current neoliberal policy developments.
Routes Through Education and EmploymentMany policies assume not simply an instrumental and utilitarian pattern of edu-cation, but also an educational provision that provides a standard trajectory. Theindividual learner passes through a number of stages of education, each giving aprogressively greater level of skills and knowledge, and each individual completestheir education at the end of one of the stages, and then enters (or is ready to enter)the labour market in a sector that is appropriate to their skills level. Education thusacts as a filter, or a sieve, that both fits individuals to the demand for labour (withappropriate training in relevant and useful skills) and grades them.The grading hastwo functions: it signals to potential employers the particular skills that have beeninculcated, and to what level, and it signals to other educational providers (of more‘advanced’ education) the appropriateness (or not) of the individual for furtherstages of education. These grading functions are not identical, but are elidedtogether in practice. In ‘Conceptualising Early School Leaving’ (Ross & Leath-wood, pp. 327–330) we suggested in Figure 1 a visualisation of the stages ofeducation and adult life. There are some difficulties with this model.
Increasing age
1Primary
2Lower Secondary
2AGeneral, academic
2BPre-voca�onal
2CVoca�onal
3Upper Secondary3A
3B
3CVoca�onal
4Post Secondary non-ter�ary
5Ter�ary
5A(1st and 2nd cycle)
5B
Occupa�onal
6Research qualifica�on
4 Adult non-ter�ary educa�on
Re�rement
i. Employment (full-�me,part-�me)
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)
4
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 numeral (i, ii, iii . . .) indicate potential post-educationactivities.While most individuals move through some of these sections in a sequen-tial manner 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.
Firstly, educational progress is often erratic and uneven. Individuals do notprogress evenly through the different levels, or through each grade in each level.Some systems respond to this by requiring a year to be repeated. Others showdifferent talents and interests at different stages of their education: the academicversus vocational division that many systems assume and codify may lock someindividuals into inappropriate routes and sediment social inequalities, potentiallyreinforcing traditionally gendered vocational/occupational pathways (Bartlett,2009). Unsurprisingly, people change their orientation and interests as theydevelop, so an unambiguous and direct pathway is rarely possible.
Secondly, the model implies that education should be instrumental in terms ofemployment. But even if one treats education in purely utilitarian terms, there aremany other important life skills that are needed besides those needed for the labourmarket. All young people need to develop skills and competencies in areas such aspersonal health and fitness, finance, managing personal relationships and devel-oping moral and social values. But education should also equip them to becomeactive citizens, developing an awareness of environmental, cultural, social andpolitical issues.
Thirdly, there is an assumption that the curriculum should be tied to the skillsset that employers require. However, these requirements are always shifting, oftenquite rapidly: there can be a tendency to be still preparing students to meet theneeds of the previous generation. The rhetoric of lifelong learning has not yetbecome embedded in the educational practice of the institutions: many forms ofeducation are based on the assumption that what is learned will not be added to oradapted over a lifetime.
Fourthly, in a number of countries, the educational structures and routesparticularly emphasise the filtering nature of each stage. Attainment and qualifi-cations focus on the admission requirements of the next level, even when manyparticipants do not wish to progress to that stage. This means that those who donot graduate with the qualification necessary for the next level are characterised asfailures, and the system produces a population, many of whom see themselves ashaving failed to attain the next level. The academic pathway thus becomes par-ticularly valued, and the vocational pathway becomes — at best — a consolationprize (Leathwood & Hutchings, 2003).
Fifthly, there is an assumption that employment is everyone’s desired outcomeand that it will be an inevitable consequence of successful education. But, asdiscussed below, there is no inevitable connection between educational success andemployment: changes in labour market demand operate independently of anindividual’s attainment. Moreover, some people will aspire to be self-employed andothers will have occasional and intermittent periods of work (artists, writers, etc.).Some will wish to work to maintain their families. There are a few people withprivate means who may neither need nor wish to work. And those who do seek tobe employed may find that they are underemployed, only able to find work on apart-time basis.
Finally, there is an assumption that the system is unprejudiced in its operation:that meritocracy is a natural rising of the cream to the top. Appointments are madeand responsibilities given to those who can best demonstrate their achievements. Ahigh level of educational performance gives access to positions and experience thatthen allow the individual to accumulate more evidence of intelligence and abilityand denies (or at least hinders access to) such experience to those with lower levels
of performance. This is an insidious argument: it implies that those who do notsucceed — even entire groups of people — are responsible for any disadvantagesthey suffer. Those who succeed academically are assumed to be ‘intelligent’ and‘bright’, whilst those who do not succeed on these terms are seen as lacking inintelligence, aptitude or aspiration. This has consequences for many children andyoung people who come to see themselves as ‘thick’ despite later returning tosuccessfully study in higher education (Leathwood & O’Connell, 2003). A par-ticularly evocative account is provided by a young girl in Reay and William’s(1998) research who says that if she fails a school assessment, ‘I’ll be a nothing’. Inaddition, assumptions of meritocratic advancement discount institutional andstructural impediments to success and ignores the fact that those who do ‘succeed’in a meritocracy take steps to ensure that their children become embedded instructures that will ensure that they succeed regardless of ‘merit’ (Vincent & Ball,2006). The term meritocracy originated in a satirical argument against mixingideas of equality with notions of merit in The Rise of the Meritocracy (Young, 1958).He suggests that an élite selected on merit inevitably seeks to ensure, througharrogance and complacency, that the privileged positions it rose to would be passedon to their offspring, even though they might well be less talented. ‘Every selectionof one is the rejection of the many’ (Young, 1958, p. 15). Writing just before hedied in 2002,Young observed wryly on how his satire had been misunderstood andmisused:
Ability of a conventional kind, which used to be distributed between theclasses more or less at random, has become much more highly concentratedby the engine of education. A social revolution has been accomplished byharnessing schools and universities to the task of sieving people according toeducation’s narrow band of values. With an amazing battery of certificatesand degrees at its disposal, education has put its seal of approval on aminority, and its seal of disapproval on the many who fail to shine from thetime they are relegated to the bottom streams (Young, 2001).
The discourse of meritocracy needs, therefore, to be problematised (Leathwood,2005).
There is a multiplicity of trajectories through the possibilities set out inFigure 1. Even if one adopts the employment-dominated argument for education,it is clear that employers’ changing and rising demands for skills mean that thismust be provided through updating, over the working life of their employees, andnot be assumed to have been provided early in the individual’s life history. Theschool structures that create streams of ‘ability’ and of subject specialisations workagainst the needs of a flexible workforce that can adapt to change.
So a trajectory that passes through, say, educational levels 1, 2 and 3 into adultactivities i or ii (with occasional skill-updating forays into iv) (see Figure 1) doesnot appear to be a prime fascia cause for concern — unless the individual and theaptitude and interest to achieve educational success in levels 4 or more have beendeterred or diverted for some reason. The other destination that is undesirable isiii: those who are unemployed or underemployed and are seeking work. Theeducational route to this destination is not necessarily simple: there is evidence thatthe higher the educational level successfully completed, the lower the unemploy-ment rate (Eurostat, 2013), but the relationship is not absolute (as in the graduateunemployment rates in Spain and Greece, for example). Therefore those who
should be of concern to the educational policy-maker are not those who fall intothe rather facile or simplistic category of ‘early school leaving’, but those who areeither:• Leaving with a lower level of accomplishment than they might have obtained,
because of failures in educational provision (particularly those based onassumptions about achievement made on the basis of membership of a disad-vantaged group or category); or
• Not in as full a level of employment as they wish, and hampered in this by theirlack of educational attainment;
and are also (for both groups)• not in continuing education or training (provided by state or employers, or on
some full- or part-time basis).
Potential Relationship (or not) Between ESL and EmploymentThe European Commission’s policies — and those of most Member States —appear to be based on the assumption that, if schooling is successful, people aremore likely to find employment.The rationale behind the Lisbon Agenda was thatthe EU’s economic future was dependent on having (or maintaining) a highlyskilled workforce that could lead in international technological high-skilled indus-tries and services, thus maintaining a competitive edge over other countries that (itwas assumed) would be content to provide more basic manufacturing and com-modity extraction industries. Education had the role in this model of providing thisskilled and highly qualified workforce. However, this model assumed that theprovision of such a workforce would be not just a necessary condition for such atrajectory, but would be a sufficient condition: if a suitable skilled workforce wasavailable, capital and entrepreneurs would be attracted to establish productionfacilities in Europe (see also European Commission, 2012).
The current global recession has shown the fallacious element within thismodel. There is a dearth of employment in a wide range of levels: take, by way ofexample, the figures in Spain (Vallejo & Dooly, pp. 390–404): although thoseyoung people with level 5 qualifications have a lower rate of unemployment (28%)than those with only level 2 qualifications (49%), getting all those who leave at level2 to stay in education to level 5 would not significantly increase their chances ofemployment: jobs are not created in response to the qualifications of those poten-tially available for employment.
In the UK, which is relatively successful in terms of unemployment rates (7.8%in October 2012, compared to the EU average of 10.6%), the evidence thatcompleting post-compulsory education aids employment is ambiguous, at best. In2011, 16% of 16-year-old school leavers were unemployed, compared to 25% ofgraduates: however, examining 24-year-olds, only 5% of those with a degree wereunemployed, while 13% of those who had left at 16 were unemployed (ONS,2013). It is thought, however, that the UK figures mask considerable underem-ployment of those who are in part-time work and who wish to be in more full-timeemployment. In short, the current youth unemployment crisis is not caused by alack of suitable/qualified workforce, but by a lack of demand for labour. This, inturn, is a consequence of the crisis of confidence in the credit markets, whichmakes employers and investors hesitate to invest in any expansion, thus not seekingto take on new employees.This is compounded by the severe deflationary measuresthat most governments are adopting.
We are witnessing two parallel and largely independent supply and demandcycles. One is in the labour market, where the demand for new labour, or even forreplacement labour as older workers retire, is very low, despite a high supply ofpotential young people with a wide range of qualifications seeking work. Thosewith higher qualifications are marginally more likely to be taken on than those withlower or no qualifications, but this is in many cases not a reflection of the need forthose qualifications, but simply employers taking on the most highly qualifiedavailable workers in a buyer’s market.
Quite separate from this is the supply and demand cycle in educationaldemand, identified by Nicaise (2000). Some individuals and groups do not‘demand’ adequate or appropriate education: their experience, or their family’sand community’s experiences of educational institutions have led them to con-clude that they are not likely to succeed. Thus, whole groups — social classes,ethnicities, genders — conclude that certain types or levels of education are ‘not forpeople like us’ (Archer et al., 2003). Particular social groups have a history ofeducational failure and of non-participation, and many members of such groups(though not all) therefore expect and demand less and are not surprised to bemarked down as ‘failures’ (Hoff & Pandey, 2004).
On the ‘supply side’ — the educational structures, establishments, policies andpractices — three factors are at work. Firstly, there is an inherent tendency torespond to demand — accentuated by government policies that commodify themarket and expect educational institutions to respond to parental and studentdemand.They therefore do not provide for, nor do they expect to provide for, thosewho do not demand. Secondly, the competitive culture that has been createdbetween schools and between national schooling systems means that those who areanticipated not to succeed are discouraged from attempting to seek qualifications,or even shuffled off to other educational providers so as not to lower the aggregatesuccess rating of the institution. Such practices in the UK have had particularlydamaging consequences for Black young people (Gillborn & Youdell, 2000).Thirdly, and coupled to this, is the widespread assumption (often subliminal) thatstudents from particular backgrounds are not capable of higher levels of study —the Roma population are a prominent example of this, and there are many otherexamples of social classes, ethnic groups, those with a disability, those of a par-ticular gender not being expected to be interested in education or study beyond aparticular level or in particular subjects (Strand, 2012).
The educational supply and demand model thus feeds on itself and its self-replication: certain categories of students are not expected to succeed, by teachers(providers) and students (consumers) alike, and therefore the supply of educa-tional opportunities is curtailed (Steele & Aronson, 1995).The consequence is thatthose without higher qualifications and ‘early school leavers’ can be characterisedprimarily by socio-economic background, ethnicity, migrant status or disability.Clearly, in terms of social justice and the need for inclusion, this situation must beaddressed. However, it should not be assumed that simply because it is addressedthere will necessarily be any better employment opportunities for the greaternumber of school leavers who have more advanced qualifications: this depends onthe vagaries of the demand for labour. Indeed, when the demand for labouris higher than the supply, employers are willing to take on less qualifiedand experienced people and provide the necessary training and qualificationsthemselves.
Social Cohesion, Exclusion/inclusion and the Potential of European‘Solutions’ Proposed to Address ESLThe consequence of the foregoing is that the educational system creates pools ofnon-achievers who are very often characterised by class, ethnicity, gender, migrantstatus, and so on,and the labour market then does not always recruit employees fromthese groups, particularly when there is a surplus of labour or a lack of demand forlabour.Thus, many individuals in these groups suffer the double indignity of failingto achieve in education and not staying on in education or training, and of becomingunemployed. In this article, we addressed and analysed the educational issuesinvolved in terms of social equity for early school leavers: what we did not do wasaddress the potential employment prospects of those who become ‘non-early’ schoolleavers because this is an independent and separate issue beyond the reach orcompetence of the educational sector, notwithstanding assertions by the EuropeanCommission and governments that there is a relationship.
The European Commission/NESSE’s (2011) analysis of research on earlyschool leaving categorised a series of potential policy strategies that might beadopted to prevent early school leaving.They identify remedial or rescue strategiesto deal with those who have already left schooling, prevention strategies to supportthose currently in education and at risk of leaving early, and long-term pre-emption strategies to prevent groups being seen as in the at-risk category. Thisprovides a convenient framework to analyse the potential impact of policies onpromoting social inclusion, raising attainment, and lowering the potential for earlyschool leaving.
Rescue
‘Rescue’ strategies focus on those who have already ‘failed’ secondary education,providing, for example, second chance schools for training and education(Looney, 2008). There is some evidence that ‘well organised and easily accessiblesystems of second chance education might have a positive impact on ESL return-ing to education at secondary level’ (GHK, 2005, p. 118). Alternative schoolsneed different pedagogic approaches and means of accrediting non-formal andinformal learning that give students qualifications that are recognised in thelabour market and access to other education/training pathways (Evans, 2003;Nind et al., 2003). Such rescue approaches can be targeted generally at all earlyschool leavers, but some evidence suggests that a focus on particular socio-economic or ethnic groups that are seen as disadvantaged may have better pros-pects of success (Ross, 2012): peer-group support works more effectively whenmembers are drawn from the same self-defined group. The benefits and impor-tance of a genuine lifelong learning approach, which goes beyond the neo-liberalconstruction of much lifelong learning policy (Leathwood & Francis, 2006) canalso constitute such a ‘rescue’ strategy, whilst also providing wider benefits forsociety as a whole.
Prevention
Looney (2009; 2011a, b, c) summarised a series of potential prevention strategiesthat are medium term policies that either try to change the structural factors thatcontribute to high levels of ESL or are designed to provide remedial support forat-risk individuals.
School selection policies in many countries have elements, covert and formal,that mean that some schools recruit a narrower and ‘élite’ student population.Admission policies may be framed in terms of parental choice, but this may skewthe intake to parents who make higher demands on the educational system, whocome from particular social backgrounds. Other policies of favouring local appli-cations can simply reflect the social composition of the surrounding area, withdiscriminatory consequences (Thrupp, Lauder & Robinson, 2002). Some studiessuggest that not only are such policies particularly effective for children from lowsocio-economic status backgrounds, but that they also benefit all students(Dynarski & Gleason, 1998; Rumberger & Lim, 2008).
A second category of preventive measures is the school-based intervention pro-grammes: these often have a dual strategy of concern targeting at risk pupils withinthe school and offering school-wide programmes for all students. These may im-prove the performance of potential early school leavers, but also serve to identify andpotentially stigmatise particular categories of students as being ‘at risk’, with the dan-gers this has for lowering student expectations (see the supply side arguments in theprevious section) (OECD/Looney, 2005; Lamb & Rice, 2008; Oliver & Gatt, 2010).
A variation on this approach is student-focused policies in schools. Here, thereis a shift from the individualistic and potentially isolating approach towards pro-viding enabling mechanisms that develop a student’s resilience as a positive adap-tation to adversity (Luthar, Cicchetti & Becker, 2000).There is, of course, a dangerthat the focus, and hence responsibility, for failure may continue to be placed onthe individual for not developing sufficient resilience rather than on the educa-tional structures and cultures that produce inequalities. Nevertheless, researchsuggests that those ‘Dropouts who [do] return possess a resilience . . . that enablesthem to overcome their earlier academic failures’ (Entwisle, Alexander & Olson,2004). There is evidence that encouraging positive attitudes to learning amongstchildren and parents to enhance educational engagement has long-term beneficialeffects, such as gaining financial independence, even amongst those who leaveschool early (Schoon & Duckworth, 2010).
A similar approach is seen in various mentoring strategies, which may havepositive effects on school attendance and grades, but there is some evidence thatthis does not necessarily have an impact on raising standardised test scores(McPartland & Nettles, 1991). However, as Newburn and Shiner suggest(2006), mentoring has a very wide variety of potential interpretations and thismakes overall analysis extremely difficult. In some cases, mentoring targeted at‘disaffected’ young people has been less about supporting their personal andeducational development, and more about changing their attitudes, values andbehaviour to fit assumed employer/labour-market needs (Colley, 2003).
Outside the school itself, there are strategies that seek to address the ways thatteachers are educated to prepare for diversity and for pupils with a propensity toearly school leaving. It is suggested that teachers can, in both their pre-serviceeducation and in-service training, be encouraged to develop specific key compe-tencies about teacher expectations and supporting diverse cultures and language(Gordon et al., 2009). Others suggest that the composition of the teacher work-force itself needs to be addressed, and that recruiting and educating a morerepresentative workforce from a far wider range of communities will help to raisestudent’s self-perceptions and esteem and the status of minorities in the wholecommunity (Ross, 2012).
A group of strategies found particularly in the Nordic countries has centred onproviding financial incentives to remain in schooling (Walther & Pohl, 2005, p. 68).The most developed of these was perhaps the Educational Maintenance Allowancepolicy in the UK, which directly targeted young people to remain in uppersecondary education between the ages of 16 and 18 (Middleton et al., 2003): thescheme has, however, been discontinued and replaced by a less generous bursaryadministered directly by schools and colleges.
Another Nordic and Germanic set of policies is seen in the status and attentiongiven to vocational education and training. Courses that are well-resourced, ofsufficient length, sufficiently differentiated to provide a real sense of orientationand direction can be significant factors in helping young people to find appropriateeducation and training. As well as some of those approaches described in this issueby Cederberg and Hartsmar, (pp. 378–389) examples can also be seen in Austria,Belgium and the Netherlands (Kendall & Kinder, 2005).There is evidence that theprovision of robust routes, such as those through apprenticeships, are successful inlowering youth unemployment rates (GHK, 2005). Apprenticeships can, however,reinforce inequalities, for example in relation to gender, social class and ethnicity,and there is a risk of apprentices being seen as cheap labour by some companies(IKEI, 2012).
Associated with these are moves towards curriculum reform, developed in somecountries that are moving from the situation in which academic education had anélite status to creating a more broad vocational model that is of equal status. If thereis a genuinely broad curriculum choice and an appropriate instructional environ-ment, there is some evidence that this may help engage young people in education(Lamb et al., 2004). However, too early pathway ‘choices’ between different routesrisk sedimenting existing inequalities.These vocational strategies (and the financialincentive strategies) are broad approaches that affect the whole student population.This has the advantage of not creating distinctions and potential expectations offailure for members of groups that are at risk, and thus contributing to a self-perception of non-achievement and lowering the demand for adequate educationfrom these groups. But their non-targeted nature means that they are possibly lesslikely to ‘reach’ the most at-risk groups, and they tend to be expensive.There mustbe a trade-off between these approaches and the more targeted strategies describedearlier; some combination of all these preventative measures is probably mosteffective.
Preemption
Finally, it may be possible that pre-emption is a long-term solution. If high qualityearly childhood education and care is provided and targeted at the at-risk groups,it seems that there is some evidence that this will contribute, 15 or more years later,to lower levels of early drop out — and higher levels of educational attainment —amongst members of these groups. Studies suggest that such provision will offersignificant (but by no means complete) gains (Barnard, 2004; Reynolds et al.,2004; Rumberger & Lim, 2008).
Conclusion‘Early School Leaving’ is a concept that is problematic, not merely because it isimprecise, and masks a variety of potentially indirect routes to the successfulcompletion of an education, and not simply because it is being used as a political
panacea to address youth unemployment. It is, we have argued, more significant inthat it becomes a marker for social exclusion, a means of maintaining inequities insocieties in which social divisions and extremes of wealth and poverty have becomemore marked over the past 15 to 20 years. All young people need to advance as faras possible through the educational system, not because this will necessarily ensuretheir place in the labour market, or because it will contribute to the overallprosperity of society; but because if offers one way of addressing social exclusion,division and inequalities.This should be the acid test of the success of measures toaddress early school leaving.
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
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