This paper arises from the concern about school inequality. This is a topic that uses to concern European organizations. Education is one of the five key goals of the “European Strategy 2020” to achieve economic growth, to combat social inequality and build a socially and economically strong Europe. This concern is also shared by international organisations such as the OECD, the World Bank and the UNESCO which, together with the European Union have become political agents that exercise their influence on national policies.

In this context, what does school success mean? This concept is complex and it is used in many different ways in scientific literature. For example, the European Council (2006) argues that school success can be understood in terms of reduction of school dropout and continuity in higher education. In this paper I take school success as a training process in which students establish a positive relationship with the school and, at the same time, achieve what is expected from them (mainly qualifications and attitudes).

On the other hand, the concept children at risk is also used in many different ways. According to Perrenoud (1990), Abajo (2004) and Fernández-Enguita (2012) the concept is related with the possibilities that students have to access to culture, knowledge and school success. In other words, in a risky situation there isn´t any economic support and the cultural level is low (parents´ expectations about education are poor, there aren´t books or computer at home, parents have low job category, etc.)

Most of these international organizations argue that children and adolescents at risk don´t use to success at school. Nevertheless, there are some few situations in what they achieve school success, in spite of the difficulties. My intention is to identify which conditions favour these stories, keeping in mind that this will allow a more equal education. In other words, I attempt to know what teenagers at risk need to success at school. From this point of view arise the proposal and the main research question of the paper: What are the pedagogic factors that favour school success of students at risk. From this proposal derive the three focal points of the research:

- Student´s relationship with knowledge: How is the relationship of successful students at risk with school knowledge? How does this link help to students to get on well out of school?

- Student-Teacher relationship: How are student-teacher relationships that have allowed for stories of school success? How are teachers that students recognise as relevant in their successful stories?

- Student´s relationship with the peer group: How are successful students´ relationships with their colleagues? Can teachers influence these relationships? How important is the environment created at school?

On the other hand, it is important to highlight gender differences in life stories. It is even more important in successful school stories because family and school have different expectations and relationships with men and women (Sierra, 2013). Some papers, such as Blanco (2012) and European Council (2006), point out that young men have higher levels of school dropout. For this reason I have focused the research on male stories.

In short, I attempt to go deep in successful school stories of students at risk. This knowledge expects helping to orientate teacher performance as well as educative national and international policies (such as the mentioned earlier: “European Strategy 2020”). The main limitation of the research is temporal, thus the aspiration is (besides provide knowledge about equality at school) to create new questions for new future researches.

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