A family’s economic situation significantly influences the educational outcomes and trajectories of its children: while families with greater economic and cultural resources can offer them educational support and encouragement, poorer families cannot do so to the same extent, resulting in their children dropping out more frequently and experiencing poorer academic performance and trajectories. It is essential to address this opportunity gap between rich and poor families, and the best tool available to public policy for this purpose is a genuine scholarship system.
A new generation of scholarships should include strategies aimed at tackling the three fundamental barriers to continued education for students at highest risk of dropping out: a) the economic barrier, through financial assistance; b) the barrier of lack of support, through a program of guidance activities; and c) the informational and bureaucratic barrier, through largely automatic access and renewal.
This proposed scholarship program to combat school dropout, the “Scholarship + secondary school”, incorporates these three components and a deployment that is perfectly manageable from a budgetary point of view.
