Demography in schools and longitudinal analysis: school attendance and schooling in cohorts of pupils in primary and secondary education

Abstract

School education phenomena are essentially similar to demographic phenomena. They should and must be studied using the demographic studies techniques. In particular, longitudinal analysis of schooling enables us to reconstruct the history of educational cohorts and thereby make a better-founded contribution to knowledge of educational performance and failure. This article puts forwards methodologies for educational demography, using as examples school matriculations for the generation of 1981 and schooling data for the cohorts matriculated in the seventh year of the school system in 1993-1994.