Factors that influence students´ secondary enrolment decisions in Portugal

Abstract

This work project examines the relation between a measure of academic ability and student’s decision regarding track and field of studies to follow, when entering high school. The scores obtained in the 9th grade national exams seem to be the greatest predictors of enrolment decisions. While the Portuguese exam score has greater impact in choosing between a vocational program and an academic one, the Mathematics exam score has greater impact on the probabilities of choosing each of the available academic tracks. Besides academic ability, social economic indicators, predominantly parental education are noteworthy predictors for enrolment decisions in secondary school. This effect however is heterogeneous for different parental education levels in predicting track taking probabilities.