Combating early school leaving: A qualitative study of compulsory training in Italy

The rate of early school leavers became a benchmark for the European Union in 2008, as part of the strategy to make the EU the world’s most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy by 2010 (Lisbon Agenda). The objective to decrease the average share of early school leavers by at least 10%, and to guarantee a high number of 22 year-olds who have completed their secondary education, stated in 2008 during the Lisbon Council was re-confirmed in the Europe 2020 Strategy, when it was used as a proxy for social inclusion. The scientific literature on the subject shows how the phenomenon of early school leaving is influenced by education-related factors, individual circumstances and socio-economic conditions. To date, research studies have focused on the characteristics of dropouts or the characteristics of their schools. However, relatively few qualitative studies on the phenomenon in a specific setting have been carried out. The paper presents a small-scale qualitative study based on the concept of “Dropout Factories” (Balfanz, Letgers 2004). Our study founds as the Local Community Dropout Factories influences the translation process (Czarniawska, Joerges 1996) of the regulations dedicated to combating early school leaving, without hindering their positive effect, and increases the risk of becoming dropouts: this seems to have been confirmed by the presence of not-at-risk young people within the group of dropouts.