Jugendliche ohne allgemeinbildenden Schulabschluß in Europa: regionale Disparitäten eines tabuisierten Problems

Abstract

The consequences of dropping out of school without leaving qualifications for young peoples' career perspectives are severe. Wherever a meritocratic system and professionalisation of typical jobs mean that formal qualifications are decisive for an individual's career, the lack of a minimum school leaving qualification has extremely negative effects on further career possibilities. In order to examine this question on an European level, various countries with differing political structures and geographic locations, welfare state traditions and centralist-federalist organisation were selected: France as a centralist, western European country, Hungary as a formerly communist country, which started its process of transformation relatively early on, Sweden as the prototype of the Scandinavian welfare state and Germany as a federalist, western European country after reunification. There are large regional differences in the examined countries with regard to the "failure rate" in compulsory school education. In a national comparison, there are repeated patterns of regional inequality and comparable influential factors on regional inequality. These influential factors range from "individual" factors, such as sex, social origins and national/ethnic minorities, through to "structural" factors, such as the school system itself or the economic situation within the country. In addition to this, there may be synergy/ accumulative effects through a combination of individual and structural influential factors. Regional inequality with regard to the school success still exist in the examined countries. The influential factors are also subject to change. It remains true, however, that these problem groups -which have grown in Germany in the past few years- deserve more attention than they have received. The approaches to explaining regional inequality in the school system must also be reconsidered, as the regional di stributions of "winners" and "losers" is not complementary.