Tackling intermediate vocational education and training dropout: Contributions from the student engagement perspective.

Spain combines high rates of Early Leaving from Education and Training (ELET) with low rates of participation in Vocational Education and Training (VET). In 2016 the Spanish ELET rate was of 19.0%, while the rate was 10.7% for the EU (Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport, 2017). Recent studies place the percentage of students enrolled in VET on the total number of students enrolled in upper secondary education between 33.5% and 35% (CedefopReferNet Spain, 2015, 2017, OECD), while for the whole of the EU (EU-26) the percentage is of 48.5% and the average of the OECD is 46% (OECD, 2017). The qualification rate is also higher in Advanced Secondary Education (bachillerato) (69.8%) than in Intermediate VET (IVET) (50.5%) (Authors, 2017a). The Balearic Islands, the Autonomous Community where the research presented is placed, registers even higher ELET rates than the rest of Spain (26.8%) (Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport, 2017), as well as a lower average participation rate and a slightly higher percentage of completion of IVET studies (Authors, 2017a). In this context, and in accordance with recent reports on the subject (Cedefop, 2016) tackling IVET dropout is a central issue to contribute to the decrease of ELET. We also want to highlight their contribution to the exercise of an active citizenship and of more inclusive and sustainable societies. The text we present is part of the project “Pathways leading to success in, or dropout from, vocational training in the education system at levels 1 and 2” (“Itinerarios de éxito y abandono en la formación profesional del Sistema educativo en nivel 1 y 2” – Ref – EDU2013-42854-R)", (www.itinerariosfp.org), funded by the Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness, the Spanish National Research Agency (AEI) and the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF). The concept of student engagement, one of the most commonly used in research on secondary education dropout, is one of the central theoretical references of our research. According to Reschly & Christenson (2012) it is a metaconstruct that brings together different research approaches developed from different disciplines and includes three types of engagement: behavioural engagement (participation in academic activities, social or extracurricular), emotional engagement (positive or negative affect on interactions with teachers, peers, academic activities, school), cognitive engagement (personal performance of cognitive or intellectual capital, self-regulation and effort to acquire a good level of knowledge). It is also characterized by the influence of the environment (family, school, community...) and for providing elements for intervention as evidenced in the model of association between context, commitment and results of students based on the project Check & Connect (Reschly & Christenson, 2012). These features are coherent with the objectives of the research and the results of previous research projects on the subject in the context of the Balearic Islands (Authors, 2014; Authors, 2015). The questions we want to answer in this text are the following: In which dimensions and variables of student engagement are there significant differences between students continuing their studies in second year and students who leave during the first year or at the end of it? How can this knowledge contribute to the prevention of IVET dropout