DETERMINING FACTORS  SCHOOL SUCCESS

1.1  The influence of parents

It has been established that the parents who cooperate the least are most often those of students said to be at risk or in difficulty. Without blaming them, because who can deny the difficulty of being a parent, there is a direct and undeniable link between the attention that the family gives to school and the academic success of the child. It is not so much a lack of time on the part of the parents, but the lack of motivation and self-confidence which is passed on to the child.

Parental attitudes and behaviors such as encouraging their child in their studies, congratulating them on their achievements, expressing tenderness to them, supervising them adequately, having high expectations and a positive attitude towards education, at school and school tasks, being a model parent-reader and getting involved in school life have positive effects on the success of young people. Conversely, the lack of emotional support, the low parental participation in school monitoring, the negative perception that parents have of their child's ability to succeed, the lack of valuation of education or the low educational aspirations of parents towards their child can have negative repercussions on his school perseverance, particularly with regard to his aspirations, his motivation, and even his academic performance.

1.2  The socio-economic environment

At a time when academic failure is regularly invoked to justify a stricter selection at the entrance to courses and levels of study, it is worth remembering that academic success and student orientation are determined by their social origin, much more than by so-called "abilities". But we have just seen that social origin is a crucial determinant of academic success and orientation.
For many families living below the poverty line, the primary concern remains the satisfaction of basic needs such as having enough to eat. It should also be remembered that this poverty is the lot of many single-parent families. The heads of these families, mostly women, have few resources and support to raise one or more children. Studies of all kinds have demonstrated the link between "deprivation" and educational success. As a memoir rightly pointed out, "Poverty is more than an economic handicap. It is also a real disqualification both socially and in terms of daily life". In such a context, the obstacles to success are numerous.

* Socio-cultural and socio-economic context 
- Neighborhood of residence – neighborhood  

The child is influenced by his peers (friends,  neighborhood, etc.)  and tends to imitate them and conform to the characteristics of the neighborhood. In other words, young people living in the same community will be inclined to adopt the behavioral models of those around them, whether positive or negative. This determinant is obviously closely linked to the socio-cultural and socio-economic context. Disadvantaged neighborhoods, remote rural areas, high concentration sectors  of poverty  manifest different problems at their level, including, regularly, that of dropping out of school. In the analysis of the socio-cultural and socio-economic context, the unemployment and inactivity rates as well as the education of the parents, mainly that of the mother, will be taken into account.

* Diet and physical activity
Lifestyle habits, including diet and physical activity, are fundamental to the development of young people, their well-being, their self-esteem, their personal and social fulfillment as well as their health, i.e. all elements related to his educational success. Young people who practice sport generally have a greater attention span at school and better cognitive performance. On the contrary, inadequate nutrition and sedentary behavior can interfere with learning and academic success.

*  Tobacco-alcohol-drugs
The excessive use of tobacco, alcohol and drugs is sometimes symptomatic of a malaise at school or in the personal and family spheres of the young person. In some cases, the consumption of alcohol and drugs constitutes for the young person a strategy for avoiding or fleeing from school responsibilities, including the choice of a career. This consumption also has a detrimental effect on the general development of young people, both for their physical and psychological health, at a time of life when the maturation of the body and the brain is not complete.

* Accessibility

Access to certain services (libraries, etc.) can prove problematic for young people and families, for example due to geographical remoteness, the availability of places or the distribution of resources between neighborhoods or cities.

1.3  The influence of teachers

For their part, educators have the opportunity and the duty to take into account the abilities, interests and backgrounds of their students when designing their lesson plans and teaching their subjects. In doing so, they can overcome the disadvantages that affect their student population. To really help these young people, they must be given better individual support allowing them to discover who they are and what they want. You have to give them the information they need to get the training they need. Many, especially young people, want school to be more than a place where education is given. We want the school to become a living environment and a place of culture for young people. We suggest giving student councils their rightful place within the school and developing extracurricular activities.

* Teacher-student relationship (childhood and adolescence)
The teacher is a significant adult for the young person, in the same way as his parents. The quality of the relationship between the teacher and the student thus exerts a major influence on the academic success of the latter, an influence sometimes underestimated by the teacher himself. The intellectual activity of learning requires a minimum of security and well-being to which the teacher can contribute through warm and positive interactions. The teacher has a major impact on the students' perception of their skills, their academic commitment, their appreciation of the value of school subjects, their expectations of success and their academic performance. The quality of the relationship is all the more important for students exposed to several dropout risk factors. Conflicts with teachers are often invoked by dropouts to explain their abandonment.

1.4 Student Behaviors

There are also other risk factors that can influence academic success, particularly those related to inadequate attitudes such as withdrawal, aggressiveness, low self-esteem, negative perception of school, etc. . One participant even estimated the dropout rate for students with behavioral difficulties at more than 80%. Statistically, these risk factors appear more frequently in lower socioeconomic backgrounds (1).

Time devoted to learning and confidence in one's abilities are the two most important factors for academic success (1).
Young people who study and do their homework are more likely to succeed than those who don't.

2.1  Learning tools and techniques

Emphasis on the language of instruction in relation to success "The learning of the language of instruction must be the subject of priority attention. Indeed, the early appearance of this gap from the first years of schooling, the importance of this compared to what is observed for the other school subjects and its persistence throughout compulsory schooling make it one of the major determinants of the more general achievement gap observed between boys and girls."

(Continued in our next section)