Grade Retention and its relationship with socioeconomic and educative variables in Spain

Abstract

The high percentage of repeating students in the Spanish educational system is a recurring problem whose diagnosis has usually been addressed from the student level and their personal and socio-demographic characteristics. In this work, a different point of view is adopted, with the aim of looking for variables at the school level and at the regional level (Autonomous Communities) that are related to the grade retention, whether they are of a socio-demographic and economic nature, or educational factors subject to be controlled. To do this, based on the data from the Spanish PISA 2018 sample on grade repetition, the proportion of repeaters per center is used as the dependent variable, which is a quantitative variable that is related to different context variables added at the center level and with different socioeconomic and educational variables aggregated at the Autonomous Community level, obtained from both the PISA data and other national and international institutional sources. The initial descriptive and correlational analysis serves as a basis for obtaining the relevant variables included in a two-level multilevel model, in which the first level is constituted by the centers and the second level is constituted by the Autonomous Communities. The results point to the importance of four types of variables at the center level: socioeconomic, demographic, related to teaching resources and related to teaching work.  At the Autonomous Community level, some indices related to social inequality and quality of life are relevant, as well as some aggregate variables related to resources and teaching work. The results point to the importance of improving the human and material resources assigned to the centers and to modify some aspects of the teaching work and the teacher-student relationship to reduce the proportion of repeat students in Spain.

Keywords: grade retention, PISA, multilevel analysis, educational policy,
secondary education.