School failure in Spain: why does it affect boys and students from low socio-economic backgrounds so much?

Despite the improvements seen over the last decade, Spain has the second highest early school leaving rate in the European Union. This phenomenon disproportionately affects boys and young people from lower-income families, and Spain is one of the countries where these groups face the largest gaps.

In this brief we use two good predictors of early school leaving: students’ academic performance (in Spanish, English and mathematics) and grade repetition. In Spain there are no national diagnostic assessment data that make it possible to link learning outcomes with the characteristics of students and households.

We therefore use data from the diagnostic assessment tests carried out in the Community of Madrid in the 3rd and 6th years of primary school and the 4th year of ESO in the 2016/17 school year.

Students from higher socio-economic backgrounds perform significantly better in all subjects and educational levels. For example, the difference between a student from a low and a high socio-economic background in the 3rd year of primary school is 58 percent of a standard deviation (SD) in mathematics, and 55 percent of an SD in Spanish. These differences are equivalent to almost two years of schooling.

Looking at gender differences in performance, the initial differences in primary school in favour of girls in Spanish and English narrow in secondary school: in any case, boys repeat a year more often than girls at all educational levels and in all socio-economic groups.

For students from low socio-economic backgrounds, despite the significant improvement in boys’ academic performance in all subjects over the school years, gender differences in repetition rates remain constant between primary and secondary school.

For students from middle and high socio-economic backgrounds, despite the modest improvement in boys’ academic performance in all subjects over the school years, and girls’ stagnation, gender differences in repetition rates (much higher among boys) soar between primary and secondary school.

Several factors could lie behind these results. For example, boys report a significantly lower level of satisfaction with school, and spend fewer hours on homework than girls. An econometric analysis of the results suggests that up to 30% of the gender differences in repetition to the detriment of boys could be reduced by improving parental support and boys’ satisfaction at school. It is more difficult to change the differences in academic performance, both in mathematics and in Spanish, although parental support seems to have a positive influence on boys’ performance. The data also suggest that in the 4th year of ESO the room for improvement is more uncertain and smaller, perhaps because it is already too late.

Beyond these two mechanisms, which could be extrapolated to the rest of Spain’s regions given how widespread school failure is among boys and low-income students, a review of the international literature on school failure points to several public policies that could help reduce early school leaving among the most affected groups: (i) individual tutoring and academic support programmes; (ii) increasing parental support with the collaboration of schools; (iii) better academic guidance; (iv) increasing satisfaction with school, which could be achieved through greater socio-demographic diversity among teaching staff and greater awareness of bias in teacher assessment.