No bridges to re-engagement? Exploring compensatory measures for early school leavers in Catalonia (Spain) from a qualitative approach

Abstract

Optimistic views about the capacity of the educational system to retain a higher
proportion of youngsters at risk of dropping out and early school leaving (ESL)
resulting in appalling rates of youth unemployment since 2007 in Spain have
proved to be based on weak grounds. Despite recent improvements since 2015,
both ESL and youth unemployment rates remain amongst the highest in the
European Union1 and there is no empirical proof for any direct link between
declining rates and recent policy reforms. However, most local policies have
been focusing on the transition from school-to-work and job-training opportunities
(García, 2016; Servei Comarcal de Joventut, 2015) instead of tackling
ESL but rather adding as a complementary goal the completion of lower secondary
education, the last compulsory stage in Spain. In fact, the lack of awareness
about ESL as defined by the EU Commission is still pervasive amongst
policy makers, administrators and teachers (Carrasco & Narciso, 2013; Rambla,
Tarabini, & Curran, 2013).
As a result of the great recession, significant changes have been introduced in
the field of active labour market policies (ALMP), youth employment, education
and particularly vocational education and training (VET) policies (González-
Menéndez et al., 2015; Hadjivassiliou, Eichhorst, Tassinari, & Wozni, 2016).
Most compensatory measures were originally designed under the EU umbrella
of the Youth Guarantee Plan as short-term interventions and were disproportionally
work-oriented rather than education-oriented. Increased awareness of
the incapacity of the educational system to deal with young people who drop
out required a shift of perspective by decision makers, to adapt already running
programmes to the new aim of struggling against ESL (González-Menéndez
et al., 2015). Thus, beyond improving young people’s employability and assisting
their access to the labour market,2 the reforms highlighted the potential of
those measures to re-engage them in the formal educational system, especially
in initial VET tracks.
This chapter focuses on two initially work-first–oriented compensatory
measures implemented by the Catalan autonomous government3 that were reallocated
within the Youth Guarantee Plan in 2015: 1) Youth for Employment
Programme (YfE) [Joves per l’Ocupació] of the Employment Service and 2)
Training and Labour Insertion Programmes (TLIP) [Programes de Formació i
Inserció] of the Department of Education. According to recent redefinitions,
both schemes pursue a twofold objective: to offer basic work-based training
in order to improve youth employability and to re-engage those at high risk
of becoming early school leavers in the educational system. Previous research
in Spain has assessed the design and implementation of similar second-chance
programmes, focusing on their effectiveness in improving both labour market
access and the return to formal education (Alegre, Casado, Sanz, & Todeschini,
2015). Other authors have focused on young people’s own interpretations
about their discontinuous transition process from (compulsory) lower secondary
education to post-compulsory training or compensatory schemes (Horcas
López, Bernad i Garcia, & Martínez Morales, 2015; Olmos & Mas, 2014; Pérez
Benavent, 2016). Nevertheless, the role of compensatory schemes in tackling
ESL and their impact on young people’s experiences remain largely unexplored.
Drawing on qualitative data gathered within the RESL.eu project in these
two compensatory measures, this chapter explores the views and experiences
of youngsters and staff about their effectiveness in tackling the risk of ESL in
relation to their official goals and the participants’ expectations after leaving
lower secondary education.