Academic failure is an important and personal event in the lives of university students, and the ways they make sense of experiences of failure matters for their persistence and future success. Academic failure contributes to attrition, yet the extent of this contribution and precipitating factors of failure are not well understood. To illuminate…

There are many factors which might cause a student to drop out of a course of study; some of these are preventable. This paper describes the piloting of a survey tool designed to identify students at risk of not completing. Attendance was found to be the strongest predictor of module completion; low or declining scores on the survey were also…

While Aboriginal children appear to be particularly disadvantaged in educational performance and outcomes, very little is known about the determinants of school motivation for this group. Commonly it is believed that Aboriginal girls perform better at school and continue longer than Aboriginal boys. This study examined the similarities and…

A study was conducted in Victoria, Australia, to examine the factors that influence Year 9 students' intentions to leave secondary school. Discriminant function analysis was used to determine the effects of family background variables, school characteristics, significant others, personal assessments, and attitudes on school-leaving intentions of…