Dropout prevention measures in the Netherlands, an explorative evaluation

In line with the Lisbon Agenda, set by the European Council in the year 2000, European governments formulated ambitious plans to halve the level of early school-leavers by 2012. This paper outlines the dropout prevention measures in the Netherlands and analyzes their influence at both the individual and school level. While most policy measures correlate negatively with the individual dropout decision, only “mentoring and coaching” (i.e., matching of students with a coach from public or private organizations), “optimal track or profession” (e.g., work placement) and “dual track” (i.e., re-entering education for dropout students) have a significant negative impact on the individual dropout decision. By means of quantile regressions, we observe that schools with a relatively high dropout rate benefit the most from dropout prevention measures.