Territorial socioeconomic contexts, education, and academic failure in the Coimbra Region Intermunicipal Community (Portugal)*

Abstract

Despite the indisputable advances in education over the last decades, school failure and early school-leaving indicators in Portugal remain somewhat high, particularly when compared with those of other European Union countries. Once identified, the need to understand this problem have given rise to a number of research studies ranging from factors mostly related to development: students’ motivations and aspirations, families’ socioeconomic and cultural conditions, school organisational aspects and teaching staff quality, which focus less on variables more related to territory. Assuming, conceptually, school failure as a multidetermined phenomenon, yet directly relating it to the geographical space in which schools are located and students live, this study seeks to identify and explain some territory-related variables, viewed in this study from an innovative and dynamic perspective, in an attempt to characterize its identity by a coordinated and cross-cutting series of indicators. This study was developed within the Coimbra Region Intermunicipal Community, in Portugal, and involved a robust statistical analysis relating primary students’ performance (10-year olds) in national exams with territorial characteristics. Thus, it points to the mutual influence of these dimensions and suggests the need for a grass-roots debate, reinforcing actions to prevent and combat school failure and early school leaving.