Browsing by Author "Huuhtanen, Eveliina"

Study delay has been considered a challenge within the vocational education, and the dropout rate is much higher than in college. Limited knowledge of the choices within upper secondary education may lead to an unfitted choice of education which for one may hold up the graduation. The main objective of this masters’ thesis was to find out which factors might hold up the graduation in vocational education. The aim is to examine what are the differences between the students who graduated in time and the students whose studies were considered delayed. The interest was also in finding out which factors are the best to explain whether the studies were delayed or not. The study delay is looked through motivation, the grade point average of theoretical studies in the last year of lower secondary education, sex, native language, mother’s education and special support received in lower secondary education. The research data was part of a research done in collaboration by the University of Helsinki, the University of Tampere, the National Board of Education and the Centre of Educational Assessment. The participants of this study consisted of 6277 vocational education students in the Helsinki Metropolitan area. The research data was collected during year 2014 when the students were in the last year of lower secondary education and in year 2017, three years after the beginning of vocational education. The results discovered differences in special support, native language and motivation between the groups of students who graduated in time and the students whose studies were considered delayed. There was an increased amount of study delay within the students who received special support in lower secondary education and the students whose native language was other than Finnish or Swedish. According to this study, receiving special support in lower secondary education was the most significant factor to explain the detainment of studies. In this study, there was no connection found between study delay and the grade point average of theoretical subjects in the last year of lower secondary education.