Delays and Dropouts

Anotace: Successful completion of upper secondary education is increasingly vital for participation in the labor market. Rates of school dropout in Sweden are below the EU average but remain a concern for policymakers. This quantitative study used the Swedish register covering 22 birth cohorts to establish the pathways available for students following compulsory school graduation and to identify the socio-demographic risks of taking a suboptimal pathway. The results showed that immigrant students arriving after the beginning of compulsory schooling and students from low-education households had the most elevated risks of engaging with upper secondary school in a suboptimal way, indicating sustained inequalities in the Swedish school system.