Early School Leaving as a Worry in Algerian Secondary Schools.

Abstract

This research aims at examining the phenomenon of early school leaving, a significant societal issue that has prevailed in the Algerian educational system over recent years. This study is an attempt to investigate the problem and inspect reasons of students’ abandonment decisions from secondary schools and to do so, a sample from the population of early school leavers has been used. To make sure of a fair and an equal chance for the participants of this research and to have balanced results; 50 participants, 25 females and 25 males, finished a battery of survey that was planned to test two of the hypotheses, in an attempt to empirically differentiate altered factors that may contribute to students’ decisions to leave schools early. A set of semistructured interviews were also conducted with both 15 teachers and 15 parents of the school leavers to gather qualitative data concerning students’ decisions to quit studying earlier and to discover other possible factors that may play a role in student attrition that had not previously been considered. Results found that classroom disengagement has no direct relationship with the decision to quit studying early however it has a direct link with school failure, and it will lead to the decision to leave school. Possible recommendations if not to stop at least to reduce the going up of school leaving among secondary school students.