Routes to upper secondary level education for the 16-19-year-olds 1

The government’s education policy goal is that 95% of pupils from a year group complete an upper secondary education programme. This report is the first in a series of two reports describing and analysing the work of the Folkeskole to achieve this goal.
The purpose of this report is to determine the significance of the individual school for a young person’s completion of an upper secondary education programme. Using statistical analyses, the report also identifies schools with an above average number of pupils moving on to complete an upper secondary education programme.
The best schools are those schools that enhance the pupils’ academic level the most, relative to what can be expected of the school. The report’s analyses show that the best schools in this sense are not necessarily those which, in absolute figures, produce most young people who go on to complete an upper secondary education programme. Many of these schools are merely fortunate enough to have a pupil base whose parents have a socio-economically advantageous background.
The report bases its analyses on figures from UNI•C, the Danish IT Centre for Education and Research under the Danish Ministry of Education, as well as figures from Statistics Denmark. The survey has been commissioned and financed by the Presidency of Skolerådet (the school council; council for evaluation and quality development in the Folkeskole).