Cross-sectional predictors of ‘risk’ for school failure

ABSTRACT

Since school failure has detrimental effects on students and on society, education policy needs to address students ‘at risk’, and support them to reach their potential. This study used data from the longitudinal national Programme for Functional Literacy (PfL) conducted in Cyprus to identify students ‘at risk’ and aimed to explore the factors with cross-sectional effect on the risk in mathematics and language, and the contribution of the school to the presence of risk across two assessment waves. Hierarchical logistic regression analyses were employed, involving student-level and school-level variables. For both competencies, from demographic predictors, only gender is found consistently associated with risk across both waves, while from attitudinal variables, students’ confidence, sense of belonging in school and general views regarding parental involvement. With regard to family-related variables, the total number of books at home and the mother’s educational level are also found consistently associated with the risk. The contribution of the school to the risk reaches 7–9% for mathematics and 6–13% for language along the two waves. Implications for research and policy directions are further drawn, in particular the need to further explore variables, not included in the models of this study.

KEYWORDS:

• Students at risk
• school failure
• longitudinal programme
• predictors of risk
• multilevel models

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank colleagues for their contribution to the development and implementation of the PfL programme.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This research is supported by the Centre for Educational Research and Education (Cyprus Ministry of Education and Culture).