Barcelona: qualitative data crucial for constant improvement of measures

By Agustí Rubio and Mariona Sacristán

Research has shown extensively that problematic absenteeism is one of the strongest predictors for early school leaving. Prevention is key. Moreover, monitoring absenteeism is an important part of a well functioning Early Warning System, one of the main policy recommendations to effectively tackle ESL. The city of Barcelona is systematising their approach to it, firstly by testing out a renewed model, secondly by upscaling the improved model to the whole city. When implemented city-wide, the monitoring tool will improve decision making processes and collaboration.

The prevention of absenteeism in the city of Barcelona has been one of the basic objectives of educational policy. Barcelona was one of the first municipalities in Catalonia to devote itself to an Integral Plan to improve the schooling and prevention of school absenteeism, revealing that absenteeism is an educational and social problem. It shows how the economic inequalities affect the future of students.
Although the Plan can be considered an opportunity to integrate actions and coordinate the various delivery partners, the day to day reality of implementing the Plan makes it clear that the sheer complexity of circuits, the diversity of professionals and entities involved is challenging the academic and educational management of absenteeism.

Divers datasystems

Absenteeism below 50% is managed by the Educational Centers themselves. They activate intervention measures focused on the causes of the problem in order to prevent it from increasing.

When absenteeism becomes regular or chronic - more than 50% - principles must refer these cases to the Absentee Commissions, chaired by the Educational Inspection. Inspectors have the power to coordinate and work with the different partner organisations and services, from Social Services to the Urban Guard (Police).

Until now, one of the difficulties was the way schools communicated the absences of students to the District Commissions. There were very diverse data collection systems in each Barcelona District. This meant the impossibility of a rigorous and consistent data treatment. The Educational Orientation Unit and School Dropout Prevention and Absenteeism designed a new and unique system of data collection and communicating absences for all the schools in Barcelona.

New absenteeism communication system

There were various extensive work sessions with the Educational Inspection, in order to design this data collection system and to design simple, but efficient performance circuits. The final result has been to implement a new absenteeism communication system with the following characteristics:

1. Respect the Organic Law on Data Protection. Every school can only have data from its own students.

2. Every single school (nearly 400) can enter the data of the absent students in a unique system.

3. Make it agile and simple for the whole schools.

4. Schools cannot manipulate the data once they are introduced.

5. That academic and pedagogical monitoring of this absenteeism can be tracked, since the data arrive in real time to Inspectors.

6. The data can be compared between the different districts of Barcelona.

7. Absenteeism Comissions can distribute the tasks, in an agile way, to the rest of the partner organisations and entities involved.

Testing and implementing

This new system was tested in two districts of Barcelona in May 2018 in order to detect possible problems and know how to solve them before the general implementation. This new tool has been presented to the Principals of Primary and Secondary Schools. After the testing phase, it will be implemented the next course 2018-2019 in all the schools of Barcelona.