ABSTRACT
The definition of a dropout varies widely. Some jurisdictions may define the dropout as any student who fails to graduate from secondary school. Others refer to students who leave prior to graduation as “early schoolleavers.” In Britain the majority of young people graduate from secondary school by age 16 and choose to go out into the labor force rather than continue their schooling. In North America, where four years of secondary school is mandatory to reach graduation, more than 40 per cent have left school before their eighteenth birthday (OECD, 1989). The early school leaving rate in inner-city neighborhoods is often twice as high as the national average. Many students leave as soon as they can legally do soat the age of 16 in most countries.
