By 2010 95% of young people in Denmark are to complete an upper secondary education. This is currently a policy goal to with high priority. Similar goals are being pursued on other European countries as part of the EU Lisbon strategy. In Denmark many initiatives have been taken, but little progress seems to have been made. The completion rate seems to have stabilised around 80% and has even fallen slightly in the last few years. The main reason for this is not insufficient enrolment, but the failure of many students to complete the secondary programs in which they have enrolled, especially in vocational education. Most of the young people who fail to achieve a secondary education degree are in fact persons who have tried without success to get a vocational education. For this reason there is much political concern about the ‘drop-out problem’ in secondary education, and much speculation about the causes of this problem, both in the school system and in the habitus of the young people. Examples of such speculation are the assumption that primary schools have given the students insufficient skills to succeed in secondary education and the assumption that students with immigrant background are insufficiently rooted in Danish culture to succeed in secondary education. In this paper we will compare the way the drop-out problem in secondary education is constructed in Danish official and public policy discourse with the way it is experiences and interpreted by young people trying to get an education. As regards the student’s perspective we will use interviews with students in production schools. This is an interim form of schooling for young people who have for some reason not entered secondary education directly but are still trying to find their way into (most often) vocational education. They have often had difficulties in primary school, and many of them have tried some kind of secondary education but have dropped out. The paper will be structured in three main parts: (1) The policy discourse around early school leaving in Denmark, focusing on (a) the way in which dropping out from schooling and the characteristics of early school leavers are constructed in the discourse and (b) the measures proposed to reduce early school leaving; (2) The ways in which students in the production schools perceive their own experiences from schooling and their prospects for education and work. (3) Discussion of findings and policy implications.

The paper will be mainly empirical. However, we will draw on a framework rooted in sociological conceptualisations (as developed by for instance Pierre Bourdieu) of relationships between structure and action. We will further draw on existing national and cross-national research on the causes of not completing secondary education. In the empirical parts on Danish education we will use interviews with of individual production school students on their background, their school experiences and their prospects. The interviews have been conducted as part of an ongoing research project focusing on students in North Jutland production schools and interventions to help them cope with language problems.

We will discuss questions like: What does the evidence from the production school students say about the possibilities for significantly reducing drop-out rates and early school leaving? Are there alternative ways of conceptualising the problems and the policy instruments in this area? The paper is explorative, so we do not have a definitive set of hypotheses. However, we expect to show that the official discourse draws on simplistic notions of achievement and motivation which limit the debate and the policy initiatives. This indicates the necessity of reconceptualising the drop-out problem and developing new and more inclusive policy instruments. In this part of the paper we will also draw on ideas and evidence from other European countries engaged in improving the completion of upper secondary education.