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The Manual for Reducing Student Dropout Rates in Vocational Schools through Discovered Best Practices
This guide presents a structured approach to understanding and addressing dropout in vocational schools using best practices identified through our research.
The framework adopts a comprehensive strategy to reduce dropout by understanding the underlying causes and implementing appropriate preventive measures.
We encourage the user to:
seek insight into negative consequences associated with a given risk;
assess the total impact of all negative consequences and their causes;
identify the best preventive practices for the user to reduce the negative consequences affecting the student dropout.
Based on our research, we have collected most popular practices implemented in European vocational schools and ratings of some of these activities.
Demographics
To collect dropout prevention methods and evaluate their effectiveness, survey responses were collected from 261 Vocational Education and Training (VET) providers across Europe.
Overall, data was received from institutions in 28 countries: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, and Sweden.
Five Major Risks (categories)
During our project development and research, we identified that most causes and consequences can be placed into five risk categories. As some consequences can become the basis for new causes, we do not draw a definitive line between the two.
To conduct research on the importance of our five offered risks, an online survey method was employed. The survey instrument utilized was an online questionnaire designed on Google Forms. The survey used multiple choice, 5-point Likert scale.
The risks are sorted in descending order of their collected impact on the problem.
Three Phases of Prevention Planning
The problem tree helps you understand the dropout problem you are trying to solve by analysing its causes and consequences.
The problem is the trunk of the tree. What problem do you want to solve?
The causes of the problem are the roots of the problem. What risks cause the problem?
The branches are the consequences. A cause and effect logic of negative consequences is constructed.
You can create your own tree from scratch or use ours as an example with in your team.
In the course of the project, through questionnaires and workshops, prevention activities used by respondents to reduce dropout rates were collected and rated.
The columns represent risks, which are sorted in descending order of their impact on the problem.
The rows show prevention activities practised to reduce the risks in order of their effectivesess.
The effectiveness of the activities was assessed by specialists representing European vocational schools.
Only 12 preventive actions were proposed in the survey, the effectiveness of which was assessed by the respondents.
Statistics of common approaches are based on responses to open-ended questions in the surveys on preventing dropout in vocational schools.
Activities and best practices to reduce dropout rates in risk categories were shared by the repondents.
New practices discovered were grouped, ranked by popularity and visualised to enhance the clarity of the information
How to Read Prevention Activity Table in Phase B
Risks:
The columns represent five major risks, which are sorted from left to right in descending order of their impact on the dropout problem.
Using the Likert scale dropout risks were assessed, with ratings ranging from "1" (negligible risk of dropping out") to "5" (Very high risk of dropping out).
Prevention activities:
The rows show prevention activities practised to reduce the risks.
The activities in the table are filtered by the popularity of the solution (detailed statistics in Phase C and reports) and sorted by the rating of its effectiveness.
The shades of the same colour are used to show efficiency levels.
Score:
Under the prevention activities is the evaluation of its effectiveness. The average rating was found in the course of the questionnaire.
"1" means the prevention activity is considered to be completely ineffective, "3" is considered to have a neutral effect and "5" means being very effective in reducing dropout rates.
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