The School Path: From the First Steps to Secondary and Higher Education research project follows adolescents’ educational paths, dropping out of school and well-being from kindergarten to the end of upper secondary education. The project focuses on the prevention of school drop-out and marginalization.
The data includes a broad range of measures (tests and questionnaires) regarding students' skills, motivation, social relations, and well-being, educational decisions from all periods of the participants school careers and as well as a registered information of dropping out from school. In addition, some participants have been interviewed at the age of 23. The School Path study includes collaboration with the Social Insurance Institution of Finland (Kela) and register information collected in Kela has been used as a part of the study.
The School Path study is an extension of the First Steps follow-up study which started in 2006 (Lerkkanen et al., 2006-2016). In the First Step study, approximately 2000 children born in 2000 were followed from from kindergarten to the end of lower secondary school. In the School Path study, the participants and their classmates were followed up until the age 23.
