Purpose -The purpose of this article is to investigate whether family background and the choice of vocational field explain the observed gap in dropout rates from vocational upper secondary education between natives and children of immigrants in Denmark and to investigate ethnic and gender differences in educational choices. Design/methodology/approach -A parsimonious version of Cameron and Heckman's ( 2001) dynamic statistical model of educational progression is estimated. By parceling educational attainment out into a series of transitions by grade, the model is able to identify barriers to educational progression and to determine the effects of explanatory variables at different stages of the educational career. In addition, the model is able to accommodate the institutional structure of an educational system with parallel branches of study at the upper secondary level and to control for educational selection and unobserved heterogeneity. Findings -The main findings are: that family background variables do not explain the gap in dropout rates between natives and children of immigrants; that the dropout rates from different vocational fields are significantly different but affect natives and children of immigrants equally; that girls do better than boys in immigrant families; and that intergenerational mobility is greater among children of immigrants than natives.Research limitations/implications -The statistical model used is not available in any standard statistical package. For the purpose of this paper it was coded in GAUSS. Furthermore, the model demands fairly large data sets to be useful in empirical research. Originality/value -The analysis provides more detailed information about differences in educational attainment between population groups than most previous studies.
Over the past decade, the number of ethnic minorities in Denmark has increased rapidly, now accounting for over per cent of the total population. This paper presents results from a number of recent studies regarding the educational choices of minority children from less developed countries. An important social concern is that the educational attainment of these children is much lower than among native Danes. The studies show that that a main reason for the education gap is very high dropout rates from vocational schools among minority children and that inadequate Danish language proficiency of immigrants, parents and their children, is an important reason for the high dropout rates, as are inadequate educational preparedness from grade school and insufficient apprenticeship positions available for minority youth. Socio-economic background, however, has relatively little effect. Recent policy changes to reduce dropout rates from vocational schools are reviewed and additional policy interventions are proposed.
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