Tackling intermediate vocational education and training dropout: Contributions from the student engagement perspective (original) (raw)

Spain combines high rates of Early Leaving from Education and Training (ELET) with low rates of participation in Vocational Education and Training (VET). In 2016 the Spanish ELET rate was of 19.0%, while the rate was 10.7% for the EU (Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport, 2017). Recent studies place the percentage of students enrolled in VET on the total number of students enrolled in upper secondary education between 33.5% and 35% (CedefopReferNet Spain, 2015, 2017, OECD), while for the whole of the EU (EU-26) the percentage is of 48.5% and the average of the OECD is 46% (OECD, 2017). The qualification rate is also higher in Advanced Secondary Education (bachillerato) (69.8%) than in Intermediate VET (IVET) (50.5%) (Authors, 2017a). The Balearic Islands, the Autonomous Community where the research presented is placed, registers even higher ELET rates than the rest of Spain (26.8%) (Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport, 2017), as well as a lower average participation rate an...