The goal of having all students finish secondary schooling has become the major challenge in education now that universal primary education is nearly a reality.

Multiple factors explain the difficulties that frequently arise in the secondary education stage, and these are reflected both in the high levels of early school leaving and in the grade repetition rates affecting Latin American countries. Early school leaving is a complex phenomenon that also requires and demands that societies and educational systems provide broad responses centred not only on educational phenomena within schools but also on the personal, social, economic, and family aspects associated with same.

Along these lines, prominent among the in-school factors detected with the greatest frequency considered key in the secondary education stage are those related to the knowledge acquired by students by the end of the different stages; the poor attention given to educational transitions throughout the different levels; lack of flexibility in the adjustment of the educational response to the needs of each student; deficient early detection of possible difficulties students may encounter in the course of their schooling; difficulty in the adaptation of the different educational trajectories; as well as, among others, lack of personal, vocational, educational, and career guidance to accompany students in taking decisions in this vitally important educational stage.

Sensitive to this need, the Organization of Ibero-American States (OEI) has, since approval of the Educational Goals for 2021 project in December 2010 at the Summit of Heads of State and Government in Mar de Plata, Argentina, established among its goals the fourth general goal of universalising primary and basic secondary education and expanding access to higher secondary education, detailing achievement levels with respect to schooling in secondary and higher education between 2015 and 2021.

Within the framework of the EUROsociAL Programme, since its beginnings, the OEI has participated as a technical operational partner in the programme implementation through the support and presence of its offices in the different countries. Specifically this has occurred in the Social Policies thematic area and, more specifically, in the Education and Employment Policies actions (National Systems of Professional Qualifications).

Concretely, the Education action of EUROsociAL II is centred on addressing academic failure and early school leaving through support to certain educational administrations in their efforts to guarantee a varied, innovative, and flexible educational offer that will enable adolescents and young adults to exercise their right to education and obtain adequate training for integration into the labour market under non-disadvantaged conditions.

Specifically, in its objective of supporting changes in the design and implementation of public policies to improve social cohesion, three working lines shared among the countries were established in the action plans of the programme's education action between 2012 and 2015. These are related to: identification and alert systems for young people likely to leave the educational system; student evaluation and monitoring models to reduce grade repetition and early school leaving; and the design of flexible and diversified programmes which address students' different educational trajectories, with special reference to the school-work transition.

As a result of these support actions developed by the European Union's EUROsociAL Programme, substantial advances in terms of school retention strategies and educational continuity have been incorporated into the countries' reform processes on which the programme worked with the Ministries of Education. This is the case of Ecuador, Uruguay, Paraguay, and Peru, where significant progress was made in the lines worked on in 2014 and which have required continuity for their results to come to full fruition. These lines are sustained fundamentally by support to and consolidation of reform processes in the public policy that endorses support to educational continuity, ensuring complete secondary schooling and preventing early school leaving.

In 2015, two countries are joining the call for EUROsociAL support. One of these is Colombia, which is especially active as a donor of successful public experiences in demand by other countries within the framework of the programme. This year it will work with the programme with a request for support to the reform of the public policy on boarding schools, which is fully aligned with the theme of school retention and educational continuity. The other country is Chile, which in 2015 is developing substantial support to various axes of its educational reform.

While it is true that in the expansion and change in secondary education in Latin America, a series of causes converge, on this occasion the systemic-institutional nature is noteworthy. This is linked to the ways educational systems have expanded and their effect on educational trajectories and guaranteeing universal and complete secondary schooling. And it is here that the analogous experiences of other Latin American countries, and also those of Europe, supply innovative elements to these reform processes, with special emphasis on educational continuity, with the incorporation of points for debate such as the changes in the organisational model of the secondary school, attention to the students' trajectories, career guidance and vocational training, the problem of certifications, and a certain degree of social mobility that favours continuance in the educational system.

Paulo Speller, Secretario General de la Organización de Estados Iberoamericanos (OEI) / Secretary-General of the Organization of Ibero-American States