TITLE OF THE PUBLICATION
Heterogeneity in the impact of the scholarship policy in post-compulsory secondary education in Spain: an analysis by population subgroups
SURNAME AND NAME OF AUTHOR(S)
Mediavilla, Mauro
PUBLISHER
Estudios de Economía”, 40 (1), pp. 90-120.
PLACE AND DATE OF PUBLICATION
June, 2013
TYPE OF PUBLICATION
Research
LANGUAGE OF THE DOCUMENT
Spanish
LANGUAGE OF THE REVIEW
English
THEMATIC AREA
Identification of students’ at risk
DESCRIPTION OF CONTENTS
This work analyses the impact that scholarships have in the likelihood of successfully ending the non-compulsory secondary level, in Spain, among the different subgroups of the population. Said analysis is triggered by one of the main debate elements about non-compulsory education in Spain: the high percentage rate of early abandonment of the educative system. This percentage (28.4% in 2012) is too high in comparison with the 10% that was established as community objective for 2020 by the European Commission.
Nevertheless, at an empirical level, the studies demonstrate that there is an effect of the publicly funded assistance in the rates of school attendance or graduation.
For this study, a nearly-experimental design was applied, taken from the Quality of Living Conditions Survey, elaborated by EUROSTAT with longitudinal data for the 2004-2006 period. The results show the effectiveness of these policies over the educative level achieved by 19 year old students, increasing between 22.2% and 25.7% the probabilities of successfully finishing the non-compulsory secondary level. Moreover, the existence of differential positive effects (related to the average impact) of the educative policy is confirmed in the cases of women and students that come from disadvantaged households, the effect of the scholarships increases as the economic level of the families decreases, demonstrating the existence of heterogeneity in the impact of the analyzed policy. Other elements that also turn out meaningful in relation with the differential effects are the education level and employment of the parents: the state assistance is of greater use (this fact is measured in the increase of school success rates in non-compulsory secondary level) for those scholarship holders whose mothers have a lower educative level and have low qualification jobs.
COMMENTS ON THIS PUBLICATION
One of the aspects closely related to school absenteeism is early school leaving. This means an important disadvantage in order to join the labor market, which produces higher unemployment rates and less salary income, as well as a long term possible effect of social exclusion and high crime rates. This work has been selected because it contributes with relevant information about the efficiency that public policies have in order to stop or relieve this problem. In the present economic situation, the rigorous assessment of public interventions becomes a crucial element in the planning of resources and the elaboration of future policies, as it allows to detect and correct mistakes as well as obtained benefits. This work contributes, precisely, to determine said effectiveness, as well as to analyze if the same is homogenous or, on the contrary, it has a differential impact regarding the different variables.
Among the strong points of this study one of them is its design: on the one hand, because it is nearly-experimental, it allows to isolate the impact of the policies of scholarships from other type of actuations that can affect school performance; on the other hand, because it is a longitudinal study, it allows to monitor the estimation according to different non-observable characteristics that are traditionally omitted, and that tend to introduce certain bias, such as intelligence and motivation.
The results of the presented work show, clearly, the impact that the scholarship policies have in the most disadvantaged sectors at a social level, highlighting the important role that public policies in education play as an element to correct social inequality. The work points out that the effectiveness of the program would be linked to the likelihood of the scholarships of increasing the number of students that continue or finish the non-compulsory secondary level in Spain.
Name of Compiler
Rosario del Rey
Name of Institution
University of Seville
Role in the institution
Research
