Desertion is the act of deserting. This implies abandoning the obligations and separating from the gatherings that used to be frequented. The word school, on the other hand, refers to what belongs to or is related to the student or the school. Therefore, school dropout is a concept that is used to refer to those students who stop attending class and are left out of the educational system.
Specialists from the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) have considered that poverty (with children who are malnourished or have to go out to work), exclusion and the limited capacity of schools to provide support are the main causes of the school dropout. See Abbreviation Finder for acronyms related to Dropout.
Another cause that can be mentioned, especially in rural areas or far from big cities, is distance. Many times, children must travel several kilometers to reach the educational center, which makes it difficult for them to attend class regularly.
The family is the one that exerts a key weight when a child of school age carries out the aforementioned desertion. And it is that the fact that he stops attending class is related, on many occasions, to the characteristics of his environment. Thus, when the child has limited economic resources, he does not have a fixed residence and also the parents do not have academic training, the factors are given so that the child does not go to school.
However, this also occurs when, in addition to the aforementioned signs of identity, in his family the minor does not find support for his education, his parents do not show any interest in it and also when his older brothers have dropped out of school.
However, it is undeniable that a series of factors that are related to the child himself and that determine his lack of interest or motivation to go to class every day have a notable influence on this school dropout. Among those would be found, for example, that he has learning problems, that outside the classroom he has to work and have adult responsibilities due to the situation his own family is experiencing, that he has aggressive traits or that he is more interested in other things than in forming.
According to 2007 statistics, school desertion in Argentina reaches 8.54% of middle school students in the first years and then increases to 19.79% in the last three. School desertion, therefore, affects 270,000 adolescents.
In the case of Spain, there are also areas in charge of controlling school dropouts, seeking individual solutions for minors who carry out the same and encouraging them and their families so that it does not happen again.
Repetition also has a significant impact on school dropout. According to the same Argentine statistics, 10.38% of students repeat in the first years of secondary school. The figure decreases to 7.58% in recent years, which shows the difficulty of adaptation after completing primary education.