Conference Agenda

School dropout remains a persistent concern in education systems worldwide because of its consequences for students’ life chances and for wider social and economic development. Early school leaving continues to challenge efforts to promote equity, inclusion and social cohesion, particularly in secondary education. Although dropout is a longstanding issue, recent changes in educational governance have reshaped how it is understood and addressed. The growing integration of digital platforms and data-driven tools has introduced new ways of conceptualising, monitoring and intervening in student disengagement and retention.

Over the past decade, digital technologies have become embedded in dropout prevention strategies. Governments and educational institutions increasingly use early warning systems, attendance-tracking platforms, personalised learning software and digital case management tools to identify students at risk and coordinate interventions across schools and welfare services. Advocates argue that such tools enable earlier responses, improve resource allocation and support targeted interventions. At the same time, critical research highlights risks associated with technocratic approaches, including reducing dropout to measurable indicators, categorising students through algorithmic systems and marginalising professional judgement when data-driven predictions take precedence over relational and pedagogical knowledge. These tensions raise important questions about when digitalisation supports, or undermines, equitable educational responses.

This symposium brings together empirical research examining how dropout prevention and student retention are being reshaped in digitalised educational systems. The contributions explore how digital tools interact with institutional arrangements, professional practices and policy frameworks, and how these interactions shape both the possibilities and limits of dropout prevention. Digitalisation is approached as a socio-political process embedded in organisational, cultural and governance contexts.

The symposium pursues four objectives. First, it examines contemporary approaches to preventing school dropout and strengthening retention in secondary education across policy and governance levels. Second, it analyses how digital platforms and data infrastructures shape and complicate these approaches, with attention to professional work, discretion and institutional coordination. Third, it identifies promising practices and the contextual conditions that support their recontextualisation in local settings. Finally, it fosters critical dialogue on the relationship between policy design, institutional change and digital innovation.

The symposium presents three papers. The first paper reviews international empirical research on how dropout prevention and student retention are reshaped in digitalised education systems. It examines how data-driven approaches frame student follow-up through risk management and predictive analytics, highlighting tensions around algorithmic categorisation, educational inequalities, and challenges to professional judgement in schools. The second paper focuses on Latin-American countries with particular attention to Argentina, and analyses the expansion of early warning systems in secondary education. It situates digital innovation within regional struggles to address inequalities in access, quality and completion, and examines how data-driven approaches are connected to pedagogical and social support for students at risk. The third paper draws on empirical research from Norway to explore how data-driven monitoring systems reshape professional practices in schools, focusing on tensions between algorithmic indicators and teachers’ professional judgement, as well as organisational consequences of relying on digital platforms to manage student trajectories.

A central argument of the symposium is that school dropout cannot be reduced to a technical problem solved through better data or more sophisticated algorithms. Dropout is a multifactorial process shaped by structural inequalities, institutional dynamics and pedagogical relationships. While digital tools may enhance early detection and monitoring, their contribution to equity depends on the policy frameworks, professional practices and social supports in which they are embedded. When aligned with pedagogical and social policies, digital systems may support more responsive interventions; if not, they risk reinforcing existing inequalities by identifying risk without addressing its causes.

This paper presents a critical review of international empirical research on how dropout prevention and student retention are being reshaped in increasingly digitalised educational systems. The review is guided by two research questions: 1) How do empirical studies portray the role of digital technologies (e.g. early warning systems, attendance monitoring, personalised learning systems and digital case management tools) in shaping interventions and practices to follow-up students? 2) What tensions and critical issues are identified in the literature concerning data-driven and algorithmic approaches to dropout prevention, particularly in relation to their entanglement with pedagogical and relational knowledge and professional discretion in schools? The review draws on research highlighting how students’ encounters with school administrative systems are increasingly framed through logics of risk management, predictive analytics and data-driven categorisation, as well as literature examining the growing entanglement between education policy, digital technologies and global EdTech markets, and the emergence of public–private governance arrangements (Decuypere & Landri, 2021; Hartong, 2021; Williamson, 2021; Hogan & Thompson, 2021). The studies included were identified within a broader literature search on dropout prevention and early school leaving in primary and secondary education, using search strategies inspired by systematic review methods. Studies addressing digital technologies and data-driven systems were identified as one analytical category, resulting in 31 peer-reviewed empirical studies. The review is conducted as a critical review (Grant & Booth, 2009) and analyses central patterns in how research addresses digital dropout prevention. Preliminary findings show a strong emphasis on early warning systems, learning analytics and predictive models as instruments for identifying students at risk and initiating interventions. Digital technologies are primarily portrayed as tools for improving coordination and follow-up across organisational boundaries. At the same time, the literature highlights tensions related to selective and uneven datasets and the risk of reproducing social and educational inequalities (Jarke & Macgilchrist, 2021). A recurring concern is the categorisation of students through risk profiles, with implications for expectations, access to support and educational trajectories.

Decuypere, M., & Landri, P. (2021). Governing by visualisation: Digital platforms, data infrastructures and the reconfiguration of educational governance. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 53(12), 1225–1237. Grant, M. J., & Booth, A. (2009). A typology of reviews: An analysis of 14 review types and associated methodologies. Health Information & Libraries Journal, 26(2), 91–108. Grönlund, A., Samuelsson, J. & Samuelsson, J. (2023). When documentation becomes feedback: tensions in feedback activity in Learning Management Systems, Education Inquiry, 14:2, 194-212 Jarke, J., & Macgilchrist, F. (2021). Dashboard stories: How narratives told by predictive analytics reconfigure roles, risk and sociality in education. Big Data & Society, 8(1). Hogan, A. & Thompson, G. (2021). Privatisation and Commcercialisation in Public Education. How the Public Nature of Schooling is Changing. Routledge. Hartong, S. (2021). The power of relation-making: Insights into the production and operation of digital school performance platforms in the US. Critical Studies in Education, 62(1), 34-49. Williamson, B. (2021). Making markets through digital platforms: Pearson, edu-business, and the (e)valuation of higher education. Critical Studies in Education, 62(1), 50-66.

This paper analyses school dropout in secondary education in Latin America, with a particular focus on Argentina and the role of monitoring and Early Warning Systems (EWS) in addressing this challenge. It explores the potential and limitations of these tools when they operate in isolation from pedagogical and social policies that support timely and effective intervention. The study pursues two objectives: first, to characterise the expansion, design and outcomes of EWS across Latin America (Uruguay, Brazil, Chile, Guatemala, Peru and Mexico), drawing on regional literature and comparative experiences from the United States and Europe; and second, to analyse Argentine experiences, focusing on how these systems are designed and implemented and how they are articulated with policies supporting students identified as at risk. The analysis adopts a critical conceptualisation of dropout as a multifactorial process shaped by structural inequalities and institutional and pedagogical dynamics. Although predictive models and data-driven monitoring have gained prominence internationally, intervention practices remain uneven and often rely on narrow indicators of academic failure. Such approaches frequently overlook social, cultural and relational dimensions of educational exclusion. The paper therefore challenges technocratic interpretations of EWS and highlights risks of labelling and stigmatisation when monitoring tools are not embedded in broader frameworks of guidance, pedagogical support and equity-oriented policy. Methodologically, the study combines analysis of research literature, international reports and regional education policies with a qualitative case study in Argentina. Empirical data were collected through semi-structured interviews with officials responsible for monitoring systems in four Argentine jurisdictions, alongside analysis of regulatory frameworks, documents, action plans and policy evaluations. Preliminary findings show that improvements in detection and monitoring do not automatically lead to effective intervention. In Argentina, national initiatives such as the Integrated Digital Educational Information System (SInIDE), together with provincial programmes in Mendoza and Entre Ríos, have strengthened the identification of students at risk. However, a persistent gap remains between the generation of alerts and the implementation of sustained support measures. This disconnect limits the pedagogical impact of EWS and may reinforce educational segmentation or contribute to the stigmatisation of vulnerable students. Overall, the paper argues that EWS gain pedagogical and social relevance only when integrated into broader policies on teaching, support and care. By examining regional and national experiences, it offers insights for developing more effective and socially responsive dropout-prevention strategies in Latin American education systems marked by enduring inequality.

Beltramelli, N., Etcheverry, L., & Bonina, C. (2024). Tracking research influence in education policy: Early warning systems in Latin America (Final technical report). Iniciativa Latinoamericana por los Datos Abiertos. O’Cummings, M., & Therriault, S. B. (2015, May). From accountability to prevention: Early warning systems put data to work for struggling students. American Institute for Research. Perusia, J., & Cardini, A. (2021, septiembre). Sistemas de alerta temprana en la educación secundaria: Prevenir el abandono escolar en la era del COVID-19 (Documento de Política Pública Nº233). CIPPEC. Vasconcelos, A. N., Freires, L. A., Loureto, G. D. L., Fortes, G., Costa, J. C. A., Torres, L. F. F., Bittencourt, I. I., Cordeiro, T. D., & Isotani, S. (2023). Advancing school dropout early warning systems: The IAFREE relational model for identifying at-risk students. Frontiers in Psychology, 14, 1189283. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1189283 Vizcaino, Y. V., Duran, O. Z., García, R. O., & González Dueñas, M. (2020). Architecture of an automated system for the monitoring and prevention of school dropout. In 2020 9th International Conference on Software Process Improvement (CIMPS) (pp. 71–77). IEEE.

This paper examines how digitalisation is reshaping administrative and pedagogical work in Norwegian upper secondary education, with particular attention to how digital systems are used to identify and support students “at risk” of dropout. Focusing on a mandatory digital platform for monitoring student performance data, the study explores how district administrators and school leaders conceptualise risk, mobilise data in preventive work, and coordinate efforts across administrative levels. It further analyses how digitalisation enables new forms of knowledge sharing while simultaneously transforming routines, redistributing responsibilities, and influencing professional autonomy. The analysis draws on a framework combining perspectives on institutional work and technology in practice. It examines how actors reshape routines across organisational levels and how “successful” knowledge sharing enables the transfer of practices across administrative contexts. These perspectives are complemented by practice-oriented research on digital technologies, highlighting how professional responsibility, agency and autonomy emerge in everyday interactions between educators, administrators and digital systems, and situating digitalisation within debates on professional discretion and preventive work in education. The study uses a qualitative design to examine how digital administrative platforms are interpreted, enacted, and embedded in daily practice. One county with extensive experience of digitalisation was purposively selected to enable in-depth analysis of long-term implementation processes. Data were collected through document analysis, semi-structured interviews, and observational fieldwork, enabling the researchers to trace how digital systems shape professional interactions and organisational routines. The empirical material includes strategic documents and reports, ten interviews with county-level administrators and staff responsible for school follow-up, and ca. 55 hours of observations of district-level meetings and interactions between district administrators and schools. Data collection spanned three years (2021–2024). The findings indicate that digitalisation does not necessarily reduce administrative workload; instead, it often generates additional tasks. School leaders, for example, must ensure that teachers enter accurate data, increasing administrative responsibilities. The identification of students at risk becomes increasingly operationalised through digital indicators and intensifying processes of categorisation. While digital platforms can support early identification and coordination, they may also narrow understandings of risk by privileging formalised, measurable indicators over contextual and relational knowledge held by educators. Overall, the paper contributes to debates on digitalisation, risk management, and professional practice in education. It shows how digital platforms introduce new preventive approaches to student retention while redefining the roles, responsibilities, and autonomy of teachers and school leaders, underscoring the need for critical reflection on how digital systems shape preventive educational work.

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