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Abstract
A vast amount of research has shown a persistent educational disadvantage in the child welfare population. Studies have argued that the less successful educational progression of child welfare clients is due to poor school performance. However, few studies have examined this empirically. In this article, I examine the relationship between school performance in compulsory school and completion of upper secondary school through analyses of population data for child welfare clients in Norway. The present study concerns all child welfare clients, i.e. both child welfare clients who have received assistance measures in the home and child welfare clients who have received out-of-home care. These results are compared with those of a sample from the general population. We know from previous research that school performance is influential in the transition from lower secondary to upper secondary school, and that academically weak students from less advantaged backgrounds usually attempt the vocational track. In order to reach the Norwegian goal of educational equity, school performance should be of less importance on the vocational track. Consequently, I assumed that low-achievers have higher probability of completing the vocational than the academic track. The results show that low-achievers complete more often the vocational track than the academic track. However, the vocational track’s potential for including low-achievers seems less applicable to child welfare clients.
Acknowledgements
The work is part of the project Qualification and Social Inclusion in Upper Secondary VET: Longitudinal Studies of Gendered Education and Marginalized Groups (Safety-VET). I thank my colleagues at NOVA (the Group of Youth Research) for useful comments on earlier draft and the two anonymous reviewer of this journal for their constructive comments.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. Because the comparison group comprised more boys and more respondents from families with low educational levels, the figure does not illustrate the educational levels in the majority population. Analyses show that in the majority population, more respondents had completed upper secondary school and exams at the tertiary level; 19% had completed the vocational track, 38% had completed the academic track and 14% had taken an exam at the tertiary level. In the majority group, 29% had compulsory school as the highest completed level.
2. Students who complete the supplementary course after two years on the vocational track may also gain entry to university or other tertiary education. In the analyses, these students were considered to have completed the academic track.
3. Apparently, some of the child welfare clients have only been living with one of their biological parents while others have been brought up in foster care. However, in the analyses I use information of the more highly educated biological parent, which may imply that the educational recourses in the child welfare clients’ upbringing are not correctly included. If possible, this is an issue that should be looked at in further detail in other studies.
4. In order to determine the strength of the correlation between grades and completion of upper secondary school, analyses without grades were carried out. The results showed more or less the same pattern as in Table , but a relatively stronger negative relationship for child welfare clients on the probability of completed education. In addition, the results showed some differences in the relation between gender, parental education and completion. However, it is problematic to compare results across models due to problems with unobserved heterogeneity in logistic regressions. The results are shown in Appendix 1.