Abstract

Considering the European efforts to retain the newly defined rate of school dropouts under 9% in all European jurisdictions, this work attempts to study the dropout phenomenon of two countries: Germany and Ireland. The aims of this work are, on the one hand, to understand the connection between the school system as a whole and the personal decision of a dropout and, on the other hand, to compare that connection between the two countries involved and seek to learn from each other. In the last ten years, Ireland has managed through several educational restructuring steps to reduce the number of its school dropouts in half standing at about 5% of young people aged 18 to 24 whereas Germany has remained at just above 10%. Germany, however, has lower unemployment rates than that of Ireland excelling at offering a wide range of apprenticeships and dual trainings to its pupils. The first chapters will allow the reader to get an understanding of the historical education backgrounds in Germany and Ireland and pinpoint the struggles which school dropouts face daily. For instance, in Germany, each state is responsible for its education offering different education roads to its pupils. Ireland has a more unified system with the Department of Education and Skills offering a unique vision to all its schools. This thesis becomes more qualitative as Galleta’s semi-structural interviewing method is followed through meeting fourteen educational personnel and school dropouts from each jurisdiction. This interviewing method followed by using Kuckartz’s thematic qualitative text analysis to evaluate the findings of the interviews will be outlined in a separate chapter to give validity, reliability, and makeup to the research. The findings of these interviews are subsequently compared with the literature presented earlier as well as the preventative and curative measures undertaken by the Education departments in both countries. This synopsis ultimately reveals the actual concerns, struggles, and aspirations of the school dropouts. It highlights particularly the similarities as well as the differences of the German and Irish dropout phenomenon, due to the complexities of personal backgrounds, school systems, societal make-up, work markets, and others. The last section of this thesis reveals the necessity to focus on a unique goal which is to strengthen the bond between pupil and school. That goal can be achieved through implementing several steps at a national and local level.