Technical work by IMDS, which raised potential causes of school dropout, oriented and subsidized the elaboration of new guidelines to support students in Rio Grande do Sul, the Student Trajectory Protection Policy, launched this year by the Department of Education of that state. The official policy document identifies six central axes of risk: (i) insufficient income; (ii) difficulty of access; (iii) violence; (iv) low sense of belonging and academic self-esteem; (v) accessibility and health issues; and (vi) adverse weather events.
The Technical Cooperation Agreement (TCA), signed in 2023 by IMDS with the Government of the State of Rio Grande do Sul, aims to join efforts to carry out projects aimed at expanding knowledge about the effectiveness of programs and public policies. The agreement has a special focus on actions aimed at children and young people in situations of social vulnerability and their relations with studies in the field of social mobility. The cooperation established as one of its priority fronts the support for the construction of evidence-based public policies, with special attention to the improvement of diagnoses and the monitoring and evaluation of results.
One of the priority fronts of the work was to deepen the understanding of the factors associated with school abandonment and dropout in the state education network. IMDS was responsible for conducting a systematic survey of the potential causes of adolescents and young people leaving school early, compromising their educational trajectory and, consequently, their future opportunities. This work was carried out based on a review of the academic literature on the subject and included a technical workshop with teams from the Department of Education of RS to promote a dialogue with the professionals of the network and incorporate practical knowledge to the technical analysis developed by the Institute.
Among the main obstacles identified in the school trajectory are the difficulties of physical access to school, either due to problems with transportation or location, and lack of financial resources. In many cases, this shortage contributes to many young people being forced to contribute to the family income and end up entering the labor market early. In addition, young people who live in families with difficult or limited access to the protection network may need to dedicate themselves to the care of family members. These factors reduce the time available for studies and impose challenges to the reconciliation between school and work.
In the school environment, the absence of adequate training for educational managers compromises the network's ability to develop and execute aligned plans between the different actors, limiting the effectiveness of actions aimed at the inclusion, permanence and learning of students. Added to this is the insufficient initial and continuing training of the teaching staff, who often do not master the methodologies or the content they need to teach, nor are they prepared for the use of new technologies. As a consequence, students are often exposed to content that is decontextualized from their reality or disconnected from practical applications, which weakens the meaning of the school experience. Faced with this disconnection, young people tend not to recognize the relevance in the content presented and, thus, lose interest in school.
From a social point of view, many young people do not have positive references that associate education with personal and professional fulfillment, as they absorb the low expectations that other people place on them and doubt the impact of schooling on their future. With regard to issues related to health and risk situation, it was identified that adolescent pregnancy can lead to school dropout among girls, especially those who live in families with little margin of adjustment and/or with limited access to the protection network.
