Detecting Early School Leavers in Real Time: The Educational Data Revolution

In France, in 2023, 7.6% of young people will leave the education system prematurely (i.e. around 200,000 young people). This figure has long been underestimated, as it was so difficult to cross-reference all the data. As a service provider to the Dijon education authority, digital solutions provider Inetum is contributing to the development of a comprehensive solution for identifying early school leavers, with a view to offering them support tailored to their needs.

But first, what are we talking about? "An early school leaver is a student aged sixteen or over who has left his or her training for various reasons, before obtaining a level 3 (CAP) or 4 (Bac) diploma", explained Florent Barth, head of the national projects and products department within the Dijon academy's inter-academy information systems department. Behind this apparently simple definition lies a complex reality.

Multiple, Unsynchronized Databases

“Some students may be wrongly considered by the French Ministry of Education as early school leavers, when in fact they are in an agricultural high school, which comes under the Ministry of Agriculture, or in the army, which comes under the Ministry of Defense, or in an apprenticeship, which comes under the Ministry of Labor,” continued Florent Barth. Inetum began its work in 2009, primarily to gain an accurate picture of the actual number of early school leavers. For example, Inetum helped to develop an algorithm capable of cross-referencing the various lists of students available, and identifying each school leaver, whatever their academy or training, including agricultural high schools. Once identified with reliable information, the early school leavers follow-up and support platforms (PSAD), along with partnership bodies (run by the French Ministry of Education) and the CIOs (spread across the country), could intervene more effectively by contacting young people and their families to offer them solutions. In the past, they used to waste precious time dealing with cases that in reality were no longer relevant. “The aim is to have the most accurate lists possible, so that agents can concentrate on the young people who really need help,” explained Florent Barth.

“As a supplier of digital solutions, our challenge is to understand the needs of the French education system, and to bring the right skills to the right place,” explained Jean-Philippe Valverde, Chief Operating Officer at Inetum, who helped the education authority manage its agility development teams, and provided coaching to the various institutions. Until 2022, the identification of early school leavers was based on three campaigns per year. “We exchanged files with our partners and updated the database only at those times,” explained Florent Barth. But this method of working was outdated: the agents responsible for recontacting young people found themselves with obsolete lists and numerous false positives. The new system relies on a centralized database, updated in real time. Each school reports students who have dropped out of the system, and the algorithm analyzes this data and queries other ministerial databases to check whether the student has resumed training elsewhere, for example at an agricultural lycée or an apprenticeship center. “It's this work that enables us to ensure the reliability of the data,” emphasized Jean-Philippe Valverde.

Real-Time Detection of Early School Leavers

What happens next? “As soon as a pupil is considered to be an early school leaver, he or she is contacted and taken in hand by those involved in the national education system or the appropriate local mission of the early school leavers' monitoring and support platform,” continued the operational director. Another major change concerns response times. Before, an early school-leaver could go several weeks without being identified. Today, our agents have the information they need as soon as the head of the school registers the pupil. This improved reactivity increases the chances of reconnecting these young people before they distance themselves too far from training or employment.

Anticipating Early School Leaving

Getting young people back into school is all well and good, but preventing them from leaving in the first place is even better! With this in mind, the national teams at the Nancy local educational authority are developing an application for schools to identify students, at risk of dropping out of school, as early as possible. To do this, they are relying on a range of factors that take into account the student's schooling, establishment, social relations and personal environment, etc. The aim is to prevent students from dropping out at the age of 16, as dropping out of school represents a major social and economic cost for France and its young people.

Contact : Jean-Philippe Valverde