Academic Causes of School Failure in Secondary Education in Spain: The Voice of the Protagonists

Abstract

School failure is, at the international level, a problem that affects, most educational systems. In Spain, it is currently a current problem that remains unresolved. Therefore, our research aims to discover and analyze situations of school failure experienced by different agents with long experience in order to understand them and find out the possible responsibility of the school itself and the teacher. The methodology used in this research is qualitative in its focus on the phenomenological approach. The sample is constituted by the following: (a) active teachers; (b) retired teachers; (c) students who live school failure and (d) subjects integrated into the working world who experienced situations of school failure. The instrument used to collect information was the semi-structured interview and the focus groups, supported by a script designed and submitted to expert judgment. The results have been obtained from “content analysis” using the Nvivo11 Plus program. A wide overview of the main academic causes, incidents from the school and the classrooms that are involved in school failure is presented. Among the most relevant conclusions is that the school, with certain actions and in an indirect way, can lead to the construction of school failure.

1. Introduction

The article presented here focuses deeply on the knowledge of the phenomenon of school failure in the stage of Secondary Education. In this sense, we ask ourselves the following question: Why do we want to understand this educational phenomenon? This is one of the main problems of Secondary Education in Spain. In the first place, this educational stage, called Compulsory Secondary Education (ESO), is compulsory, free, from 12 to 16 years of age (basic education), consists of four academic years and is organized according to the principles of common education and attention to diversity. Secondly, the student enters Bachelor (High School). This educational stage is part of the non-Compulsory Secondary Education, is voluntary and consists of two academic years (between 16 and 18 years of age). Further, this educational stage has different modalities and is organized in a flexible way since it offers a specialized preparation to the students according to their training interests and allows the incorporation to the working life.

Actually, in Spain, the problem of school failure is in force in basic education, as greater attention is requested to improve student learning and motivation to continue their compulsory studies successfully and to avoid, on the other hand, early school leaving.

In this sense, school failure is an issue of national concern, since we often receive constant information from the different media regarding the high percentage of students suffering from such a problem, especially when the results of the PISA Report (Programme for International Student Assessment) are made public.

Due to the information disseminated by the media, school failure is now often related to those young people who do not pass the stage of Secondary Education and subsequently have left the education system while they are of school age, and consequently, they are not inserted in the work environment, in some cases, because they have not been able to achieve it and in others, because they do not want to achieve it.

But we ask ourselves the question, what is considered as school failure? We think that it is directly related to students who attend Secondary Education and do not finish it, having a path through Secondary Education that is probably negative, possibly motivated by repetitions, absenteeism, lack of motivation, and so on. We can point out that this term is very generalized and the negative relationship between the student and the school is called school failure. But it must be differentiated from other related terms to avoid confusion (Escudero et al. 2009; Martínez-Otero 2009), since currently, at an international level, it is thought that a student is not sufficiently trained when he or she does not obtain a Secondary Education degree or when he or she only has this degree and has not continued his or her studies. In this case, it is called early school leaving, being intimately related to school failure and absenteeism, the latter referring to the continued lack of attendance at classes.

Therefore, today, the concern about school failure that has been so deeply studied years ago is once again re-emerging and experts have continued to investigate this matter due to the fact that this phenomenon is the main objectives of many investigations (Antelm et al. 2018; Gázquez and Núñez 2018; Gordon 2016; Jurado and Tejada 2019; Vázquez 2018) and spanish reports (Ministry of Education and Vocational Training 2015; Ministry of Education and Vocational Training 2019) and European reports (OECD 2016; UNESCO 2016).

In this sense, at the global level in the Incheon Declaration, a general objective regarding education is proposed to be achieved in the year 2030, which is “To guarantee an inclusive and equitable education of quality and to promote opportunities for lifelong learning for all” (UNESCO 2016). Among other strategies to achieve this are work to get to provide such education to all people, including those who are marginalized, making special efforts to keep them in the educational system with effective results. In other words, it is to work to train the entire population, avoiding school dropout and failure, thus achieving educational success. In this line, Spain is one of the countries with the highest rate of school failure, and so we need to reduce this in order to reach the level of the European Union (Roca 2010; OECD 2019).

Such investment in education and the attainment of these goals is necessary because it is clear that a well-educated, skilled and competent population is able to cope with the changes that are dizzyingly occurring in society at all levels. This is why new skills are needed, as well as skills for teamwork, leadership, decision making in adverse circumstances, etc., which may not have been demanded before in order to function in life and in the world of work, and which are now essential (Bolívar and Pereyra 2006; Ministry of Education and Vocational Training 2019).

Aware of these educational and social needs in which school failure is implicated, various studies have studied them from different perspectives. Focusing on factors, the personal characteristics of students are of great interest when investigating school failure and academic performance (Choi and Calero 2013; De Castro and Fialho 2019; Pulido and Herrera 2016). There are also authors who consider the social and family context as elemental in its influence on student performance and the formation of this phenomenon (Chaparro et al. 2016; Ibabe 2016; Mínguez et al. 2019; Moreno 2010; Pérez et al. 2013; Fernández et al. 2011). However, the most predominant approach is that school failure is a construction that is formed throughout the student’s life in which multiples factors of different types are involved (Adame and Salvà 2010; Aristimuño and Parodi 2017; Carbonell 2010; Choi and Calero 2013; Da Silva and Ravindran 2016; Feito 2015; Fernández et al. 2010; Olmos and Mas 2013; Roca 2010) and, in this sense, the results of this research agree, since the subjects of our research do not diminish the importance of the social, family and personal context of the student, among others. However, it is the academic factors on which we have focused, being those that occur in the educational context itself. They are also of interest to various researchers, partially studied such as (Abellán 2019; Escudero 2016; Escudero and Martínez 2012; Rujas 2017), which focuses on measures of attention to diversity, or (González and López 2010; Pérez 2010; Pérez 2007), which study the academic gap between the school and the teacher in relation to current demands.

2. Materials and Methods

The methodology used is qualitative, focusing on the phenomenological approach. We consider this method the most appropriate because it includes school failure, defined as “the description of the meanings of lived experience” (McMillan and Schumacher 2012, p. 402).

The aim of this work is to discover and analyze situations of school failure experienced by different agents (active teachers, retired teachers and students who experience school failure and people integrated into the world of work who experienced situations of school failure).

The main objective is to understand and find out the responsibility of the school and the teacher for the failure of students in the Secondary Education stage.

In order to choose the study sample, the centers were previously selected on the basis of the “intentional selection based on criteria” procedure (qualitative methodology). In relation to this, centers were chosen from the province of Granada (Andalusia, Spain) of public and private-concerted ownership, and in addition, the characteristic of being centers of difficult performance and with low academic results. Adult education centers also participated.

Subsequently, we determined the choice of research subjects: 18 active teachers of Secondary Education, 10 retired teachers with experiences of school failure, 10 students of Secondary education and 6 professionals with experiences of school failure. We understand that all of them represent great advantages for study, as they have a long experience of school failure. In addition, 5 focus groups were held in different schools composed of practicing teachers selected with the same criteria as for the interviews.

The criteria established for active teachers were:

• At least 10–15 years of service.
• Teachers with at least 10 years of work experience in centers with a high percentage of school failure.
• Currently holding a teaching or management position.
• Teacher of subjects such as Spanish Language and Literature, Mathematics, Biology, Physics and Chemistry, Geography and History and first foreign language.
• Secondary Education teachers may give classes in some of the measures regulated in the legislation for attention to diversity.

In relation to retired teachers, the criteria were:

• Teachers who have worked at least in the last 10 years in centers where there has been a high percentage of school failure.
• Have held a position in the last 10 years of your professional teaching or management career.

As for the group of students participating in this study, the established criteria were:

• Students with problems in obtaining the Secondary Education certificate and opt for Basic Professional Training.
• If possible, they have gone through other measures of attention to diversity governed by the legislation.

Finally, the criteria established for the subjects integrated in the work environment:

• Active workers in any trade between the ages of 20 and 36 without a Secondary Education certificate who are currently in Secondary Education for Adults.

The data was obtained through semi-structured interview and focus groups and supported by a script validated by a system of judges. The questions are semi structured and open ended, focused on the objective that guides the research. Interviews and focus groups were recorded and transcribed literally, ranging in length from 90 to 120 min.

For the collection of data, the first step was to obtain authorization from the Granada Education Office and the Inspectorate of Education and from the principals of each of the centers. In addition, consent authorizations were signed beforehand. These documents explained the purpose of the research as well as the need for audio recording of the conversation in order to carry out the transcription and analysis of the data, warning that the treatment of their information was intended solely for the purpose of this study.

The data analysis procedure was called “content analysis” and was carried out through the three phases marked by Bardin (2002): 1st, pre-analysis; 2nd, use of the material; 3rd, treatment of the results, inference and interpretation.

In the first phase, the material was prepared by literally transcribing the interviews and focus groups; in the second phase, the categorization process was carried out by delimiting the units of significance, using the word, phrase and paragraph, and codes were established (See

Table 1. List of codes of the main categories and subcategories.

Academics Factors	School G.F.E (School Generate School Failure)	Teacher G.F.E (Teacher Generate School Failure)
education system	level change	classroom layout
investment in education	curriculum	specialty
teacher selection	management	stacking
inspection in education	school organization	evaluation
lack of authority and respect for the teacher	school’s educational project	transmit. curriculum values
absenteeism	teaching time	pedagogical training
dropout	teacher instability	social educator training
	legislative measures	continuing education
	number of students per classroom	methodology
	type of school	fear of change
		motivation and expectation
		level of exigency
		teaching program
		attention to diversity
		resources
		teacher–student relationship
		teacher attitude
		teamwork
		tutoring
		vocation

).

Finally, in the third phase, the treatment and analysis of the data carried out by the QSR Nvivo 11 Plus qualitative program was carried out, which facilitated the preparation of the results report. In the report obtained, the findings obtained are shown, supported by textual quotations following the guidelines offered by McMillan and Schumacher (2012).

The textual quotes that are presented supporting the results are from the different protagonists and can be identified by the acronyms that appear in parentheses at the end of them, together with the reference number assigned to it by the program used. I describe them below:

-

Active teachers: (EPA. Ref )

-

Retired teachers: (EPJ. Ref )

-

Students with school failure: (EA.Ref )

-

Subjects integrated in the workplace: (EPE.Ref)

The abbreviation “Ref”refers to the coding reference number.

3. Results

After gathering the evidence obtained (see Figure 1, showing a number of coding references of each of the categories, differentiated in colors depending on the group of subjects to which it refers—active teachers, retired professors, subjects integrated in the working world and students on the academic factors of school failure). We have structured the results in three big blocks: (a) academic causes related to the educational system and other influential elements; (b) academic causes related to the school; (c) academic causes related to the teacher.

3.1. Causes Relating to the Education System and Other Influential Elements

It is important to point out that between the factors that lead to school failure is the instability of the educational system, due to the diversity of educational laws that have existed and that have also been strongly politicized. This has negative consequences including, among others, the time spent on high bureaucracy taking time away from teachers to improve their educational practice:

“How can it not fail? If it is an instability in teaching… This has contributed to the malaise of teachers because they have given us a lot of bureaucratic tasks… as if the important thing is to write more than to do”

(EPJ. 6 Ref. 4).

The selection of the teaching staff is another factor, which they agree is not the best—both in public schools and in private-concerted schools. In the former, by the system of opposition and in the latter, by the criterion of selection of personnel similar to business, which is not always the most accurate:

“(…) I am talking about concerted centers, which do not have the preparation they should have or are often contracted because it is more of a company (…)”

(EPA. 3 Ref. 1).

In relation to investment in education and both human and material resources, it can be said that the decrease in these resources, as a consequence of the economic crisis, has an enormous impact on the quality of education, especially when we are trying to teach the diversity of the student body and trying to compensate for inequalities:

“Because these measures require more teachers, because they require more teaching hours (…) because it is what most affects”

(EPA. 7 Ref. 2).

Inspection in education is another factor when it does not suppose a solution to the problems arisen in the centers of absenteeism, early school leaving, school failure or when they have not supported initiatives of the managerial team for its resolution. It is also an element of regulation that is limited to checking the final results of the centers without understanding their peculiarities:

“(…) but now effective that they have helped me, that they have gone there to solve for the problems that know appears in the memories of end of course, in the evaluations of each year, nobody.”

(EPJ. 3 Ref. 2).

Lack of authority and respect for the teacher. This is an element that is closely related to family education. The teachers interviewed consider that there is an overprotection and permissiveness on the part of the parents that leads to an attitude assimilated by the students and that they transfer to society and the school. Such an environment between teachers and students leads to distance between teachers and students and families, which is not conducive to solving educational problems and adopting common solutions:

“(…) I have a particular case of a student who has so little respect when it comes to speaking, and you have already had such a lack of respect that it is difficult for me to address her (…), it makes me feel bad”

(EPA. 15 Ref. 1).

Finally, it should be pointed out that absenteeism and dropping out of school are problems that are closely linked to school failure. School failure leads to absenteeism and ultimately to early school leaving:

“In the first two, in the second two and in the third of the Secondary Education, then all of them. I started to miss…”

(EA. 10 Ref. 1).

3.2. Causes Relating to the School

Respondents indicate that the school may somehow generate school failure even though it is not the main actor:

“I think both the teacher and the school have a very high percentage of responsibility for school failure. Not all, and in some cases more than in others”

(EPA. 5 Ref. 1).

Among the reasons why it is outdated to serve today’s society, and is a reproducer of social classes, gender inequality, sex and ethnic-cultural, is reflected in this quote:

“A school that does not serve to eliminate the three great discriminations that the human being has, is useless, and these are: discrimination of social class (…) of sex or gender (…) and ethnic-cultural discrimination”

(EPJ. 2 Ref. 1).

The type of center is a variable that influences in relation to the area and the context in which it is located and also the involvement of families in the education of their children:

“I think it’s more the center, what zone it’s in (…). If the center is in an area where parents don’t care, then everything is bad.

(EPA. 12 Ref. 1).

Attention to diversity and the legal measures in force in educational legislation are conditioning factors. In relation to the first, it is elementary to provide and improve attention to diversity that meets the needs of the students in the classrooms, since at present it is not enough, as this teacher points out:

“We are talking about schools that had 35 students per class, where students with educational needs could have 2 or 3, there are 4 or 5 with a disruptive attitude and only one person to organize all the activity inside the classroom. So I’m sure that you can always do more, that you can articulate means…”

(EPA. 17 Ref. 1).

Retired teachers, who have spoken of the ineffectiveness of automatic course promotion, believe that it should be allowed to repeat more than twice at the same stage, since promoting without acquiring the knowledge of each course does not benefit the students, nor does it reduce school failure, but on the contrary:

“(…) repetition for me has been a very important handicap as far as student motivation is concerned, as the student who suspends promotes directly. For me, this has been one of the factors that could have influenced failure (…)”

(EPJ. 4 Ref. 1).

Flexible groupings can also lead students to continue their academic journey through the different measures of attention to diversity, and this can lower their self-esteem, increasing their risk of school failure, as this teacher points out:

“I was told by one of the flexible: “he who goes into flexible does not go out anymore”. That is true”

(EPA. 6 Ref. 1).

Another relevant factor is the change of educational level (from Primary to Secondary Education). It influences when students are treated as adults in the first Secondary Education when they are only 12 years old. In addition, the change in secondary school, with several subjects and teachers, makes teaching more impersonal:

“You don’t get any support teachers anymore, and everything’s different. Each subject with a different teacher… I had a teacher for all of them in primary school.”

(EPE. 6 Ref. 1).

The curriculum is an important factor, as it is considered not to be designed to serve the students of today’s society. Because it is too theoretical, with very abstract contents and few linked to practice, and it produces the disengagement of the students by not checking the functionality of the learning:

“The Secondary Education has contents so abstract and so removed from everyday life… when they should be much closer to the reality of personal circumstances”

(EPJ. 10 Ref. 2).

There is also the pressure that teachers feel to teach it and the need to make effective curricular adaptations in order to pay attention to diversity.

The management of the school has an impact on school failure when it does not promote a good dynamization of the teaching staff as well as teamwork, does not create a good climate, does not have clear objectives to achieve, limits the innovative proposals of the teachers, does not effectively solve the problems of the school or when it does not design a school organization adapted to the reality of the school:

“If we all do not follow the same line, we can create many conflicts”

(EPA. 5 Ref. 1).

The educational project is another factor when it is not updated due to the stagnation that the teachers feel due to the fear of change and the lack of continuous training. In this way, they avoid educational projects based on innovative methodologies, focusing on what they already know, since the fear of innovation and long-term changes paralyses them:

“A document is made and kept and taken out when necessary, but no systematic work is done”

(EPJ. 9 Ref. 2).

Another very current factor in our country is the instability of the teaching staff. The interim situation of many teachers is not positive for the school or for the students. Involvement in the dynamics of the center is a waste of work because there is no continuity and the cycle of implication, learning and development is always beginning, cutting off when they have to change centers:

“(…) the lack of stability of personnel, there is much interim that can work divinely, but continuity does a lot too”

(EPA. 6 Ref. 1).

With regard to the ratio, the active teaching staff stresses that a high ratio limits adequate training for teachers, due to the diversity of the students in the classrooms: “(…) you cannot propose a practical oral class (…), or listen to an audition (…) because you have thirty students. If we have ten, there are subjects that must be divided (…) so that you can attend them all” (EPA. 11 Ref. 3).

Teaching time is another relevant factor. Limiting the number of sessions per subject to one hour does not make it easier to carry out innovative methodologies that require more planning time in the classroom. Another element in this respect is the design of the school timetable. This does not fit the age of the students, they start very early, especially for students who have to move from one locality to another, and then pursue a constant performance in all subjects during the six hours of class:

“(…) there are children who come from a village and have to get up at half past six, and even the four who arrive at their house… How are you going to ask 12 year old children to give up at the last minute on Fridays? If he’s not human.”

(LFS. 14 ref. 1).

3.3. Causes Related to the Teacher

The teacher, in part, is responsible for leading to school failure just like any other factor, as shown in the following quote:

“(…) I think it can, but it depends on how the teachers give the class”

(EPE. 2 Ref. 1).

Fear of change and stagnation may be among the most interesting factors. These are attitudes of teachers who have lived through other stages of education where the characteristics of society and, consequently, of the students were different and the type of teaching given in the centers was traditional. Today, some of them still yearn for that era because the circumstances are very different now, the diversity of the student body is evident and, therefore, the type of teaching cannot be the same. Thus, this change implies a great effort for them to assimilate it, which leads them to feel blocked when they consider educational changes different from what they have been doing and they are not qualified for it:

“You are afraid of innovation, of the radical changes they propose”

(EPA. 12 Ref. 1).

Continuous training is closely related to this factor, since teachers, although aware of their shortcomings, do not worry about updating themselves. Among the main causes is the fact of having to invest time outside school hours, which is another reason for this stagnation.

Continuing along the lines of training, it is important to have social education training, for example, social skills that allow teachers to empathize with students, especially those who live in social exclusion:

“Mr. teacher, how much percentage do you have of teacher and street educator? I 100% teacher and street educator 0%, go to the construction”

(EPA. 4 Ref. 1).

As far as pedagogical training is concerned, it is considered that to practice as specialist teachers is not enough, the old Pedagogical Adaptation Course and now the Master in Compulsory Secondary Education being incomplete training. When they arrive at the reality of the centers, they feel that they lack the competences and skills necessary to teach all the students and they end up learning from trial and error and from the advice of their classmates:

“(…) We enter with a very serious problem that is at the origin of everything, which is the formation of teachers (…) they continue to form with a strong epistemological, theoretical (…) load”

(EPJ. 3 Ref. 1).

Derived from the previous point, this has to do with how to transmit the curriculum, since specialist teachers do not have the necessary training to do so in a way that facilitates student learning. They focus on explaining the contents of the subject without teaching pedagogically. This is shown in the next quote:

“My subject… Mathematics, wow,” “then Physics, History…” (…), because that’s not what’s important.

(EPJ. 3 Ref. 1).

The methodology is a factor to which the interviewees have given great importance. They consider that it is essential in the teaching–learning process, and that currently a very traditional academicist methodology continues to be applied, where the center is the teacher and not the student, and this does not stimulate the student:

“If you have a teacher who explains and explains…, there comes a time when you disconnect and get lost. Whether you like it or not this way of teaching makes you despair and pass”

(EPE. 5 Ref. 1).

Also, it is helpful to use ICT tools, or to use them properly The active teachers know that there are not enough resources. This situation causes that teachers to use traditional methodologies as their usual tools:

“The media, which unfortunately here despite being an ICT center we have very few computer resources that would be very good. The absence of planning activities related to this can cause school failure”

(EPA. 12 Ref. 1).

It is vital how the teaching programming influences education. When it leaves relevant aspects to chance, it causes the classes to be unproductive. Further, this is an addition to not selecting adequate content according to the level of the students, as well as, problems that are found when programming does not attend to the diversity in the classroom. Homework, too, can be a factor in school failure.

“(…) he sent us for a week all the exercises of the topic, a lot of work, that’s how it was. And since I didn’t like it, I went by and the teacher said to me: ‘cheer up’, but what do you mean?”

(EPE. 3 Ref. 1).

This also influences the disposition of the classroom, because they believe that the habitual distribution of classrooms is not the most adequate, since one-way teaching is promoted, where the teachers have all the protagonism and the students passively dedicate themselves to receive the information, which does not favor debate or participation among them:

“We did not change the structure of the classes, the tables, six hours looking forward sitting on chairs and the teacher releasing the roll and the students collaborating little”

(EPA. 14 Ref. 1).

Other relevant factors are the teacher’s level of demand, motivation and expectations. The fact is that teachers who are too demanding and authoritarian provoke the rejection of students. This is stated by active teachers and students, and it cannot be demanded above the level of the student because he will believe that he will not be able to reach the objectives and will abandon the subject:

“When you are younger you see a super-strict teacher, it is that you get bored and leave her, and you don’t need to be clapped to get bored, because if they don’t make it easy for you imagine”

(EPE. 1 Ref. 1).

In terms of motivation and expectations, there are teachers who do not believe in the abilities of students at risk of educational exclusion, which causes their lack of motivation to increase further, lowering their self-esteem and giving up everything as a lost cause:

“I’ve met teachers who might sink you inside: “You’re a fool.” Who despise students”

(EA. 3 Ref. 1).

The teacher’s attitude and the teacher–student relationship are incident factors, since the fact that the teacher teaches the class with a negative and unwilling attitude provokes mistrust and even rejection, which increases if, in addition, there is no connection between the two:

“If the teacher comes with a bad face… I don’t know, you get the heavy class”

(EA. 4 Ref. 1).

Teacher involvement and vocation can be incident elements in school failure; when teachers do not make engage in self-evaluation to adopt solutions to the errors of their teaching practice, or when there are problems in their classes and with their students, and are not ready to solve them and understanding them to achieve better educational practice:

“There are others who have been for many years, are tired and give their class and fly”

(EPE. 4 Ref. 2).

In relation to "teamwork", this action fails when there are ineffective meetings of teachers or when there is a lack of coordination at department or school level in specifying innovative and pedagogical methods to improve teaching.

“The great coordination with your classmates is: how many topics we are going to give in the first trimester and how many exams we are going to do, without stopping to think about how to organize this specific learning and how I can make it more digestible”

(EPJ. 10 Ref. 1).

“Evaluation” suffers negatively when a teacher no designs an correct assessment. Since it is based solely on the final result of an examination without regard for the student’s performance and evolution which leads to the discouragement of those who have struggled to achieve successful results:

“You’re doing me the best test, you’re not doing me the best…”

(EPE. 4 Ref. 1).

Finally, we have to deal with tutoring, who believe that it is not channeled as it should be, and parents do not use it to improve their children’s academic success, moreover, teachers do not encourage it enough:

“Maybe it’s also our fault for not teaching them more tools at other stages that they could use so in order to facilitate their study.”

(EPA. 1 Ref. 1).

4. Discussion and Conclusions

Based on the results obtained, we can say that school influences school failure in an indirect way, through the model of centralized education that we have in Spain. The instability of the education system is determined by the constant change in education policies. Thus, we agree with Escudero and Martínez (2012) that the education system must be a key factor that leads to school failure when it promotes certain actions that are not conducive to comprehensive and quality education. Wennström (2019), points out in his study, that there are educational policies that lead to failure, achieving results that are contrary its objetives. Drake (2019) indicates that it leads to social exclusion and student failure when there are schools and students with low economic and social level, this situation leads to the success and continuity of students being diminished in the educative system.

This leads us to reflect that one of the big problems is the lack of obtaining a real and beneficial educational pact for all. What promotes the current situation of the school that can lead to school failure? Measures adopted for the prevention of this phenomenon do not have the desired effectiveness for its resolution but sometimes achieve the opposite effect, mainly with students in a situation of educational exclusion. This has been verified in the results presented in this paper also coinciding with other studies, such as that of Abiétar-López et al. (2017). When the Education Inspectorate does not help to solve the problems of schools (Álvarez and Pérez 2010) and the selection of teachers is not improved, this situation resulting in the lack of employment of vocational and committed professionals (Marina et al. 2015). Also, in the school, this situation avoid the stability of teachers and other school personnel, it does not favor the involvement and constant of teachers in the school. Another key element is the current curriculum, when it continues to be oriented to “academic” education far from pragmatic learning. Hence, students do not understand why they need the contents of the subjects they study (Bolívar 2015). Further, how does the change in educational level, from Elementary Education to Secondary Education? How it happens? This process affect at the curriculum of the stage and training of specialist teachers (pedagogical training). The principals need real autonomy to adapt to the characteristics of the center and to make effective educational projects to attend to the diversity of students (Martínez-Valdivia et al. 2018; Moral et al. 2019).

From this perspective, the figure of the teacher is fundamental and therefore the results show that this affects school failure, an aspect recognized by the teachers themselves. Within the socio-educational context in which teachers find themselves, it is easy to apply the traditional methodology (OECD 2019) either because of the inheritance obtained, because of fear of change, or because of a lack of training and vocation, being incongruent with social demands and with the characteristics of the student body. Further, this is aggravated when the teacher must constantly change his or her educational practice according to legislative requirements. This can produce an attitude of lack of involvement and lead him to do a mechanical job in his performance in the classroom and with his classmates.

Along with this situation of the school, we find the devaluation of the figure of the teacher by society. It is evident when there is a lack of respect for their authority on the part of the students and supported, on many occasions, by the family itself, which causes the relationship between teacher and student to be more impersonal and distant, which can lead to school failure (OECD 2019).