Analysis of the Approval Rate in Costa Rican High Schools by Field of Study in the Period 2014-2019
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.15359/ree.30-2.21328Keywords:
Secondary education, trade school, GLMM, approval rate, MEP, SDG 4, quality education, educational outcomesAbstract
Objective. This study analyzes whether there are significant differences in the approval rating between these two educational options (technical and academic), overall, and by gender, during the period of 2014-2019. Method. Official data from the Ministry of Public Education (MEP) was used based on select, public high schools with information available for at least five of the six years of the period analyzed. The sample included 311 academic high schools (259 daytime and 52 night) and 167 technical high schools (124 daytime and 43 night). Three response variables were defined: overall approval rating, female and male approval rating. Generalized linear mixed models (GLMM) with a beta distribution were fitted, including random effects for school and interaction terms between modality and time. The significance of the effects was evaluated using likelihood ratio tests. Conclusions. The results show differences in the approval rate among academic or trade school avenues, students’ gender, and modality (daytime/nighttime), evidencing a better average performance in daytime technical high schools compared to their nighttime counterparts. This analysis provides evidence for decision-making in educational policy, particularly regarding the strengthening of technical education.
Downloads
References
Alvarado Calderón, G. & Mora Hernández, R. (2020). Educación técnica secundaria pública en Costa Rica: 1950-2014. Revista Actualidades Investigativas en Educación, 20(2), 1-35. https://doi.org/10.15517/aie.v20i2.41668 DOI: https://doi.org/10.15517/aie.v20i2.41668
Brooks, M. E., Kristensen, K., van Benthem, K. J., Magnusson, A., Berg, C. W., Nielsen, A., Skaug, H. J., Maechler, M., & Bolker, B. M. (2017). glmmTMB balances speed and flexibility among packages for zero-inflated generalized linear mixed modeling. The R Journal, 9(2), 378-400. https://doi.org/10.32614/RJ-2017-066 DOI: https://doi.org/10.32614/RJ-2017-066
Camacho-Calvo, S., Calderón-Ramírez, M. V., García-Fallas, J., Kemper, J. M., Maldonado-Mariscal, K., Vargas-Porras, A., & Alpízar-Alpízar, A. (2022). Estudio de caso país sobre educación y formación técnica y profesional (EFTP) en Costa Rica. INIE. https://repositorio.inie.ucr.ac.cr/server/api/core/bitstreams/d4885b6a-57e8-457b-997e-be45b06b70f1/content
Castro Jiménez, S. & J. León Mena, J. (2024). Brechas de género en el rendimiento académico de estudiantes de primaria y secundaria: Revisión documental. CONARE-PEN. https://repositorio.conare.ac.cr/server/api/core/bitstreams/053a81a7-b9f6-45cb-a057-ff24da298c0b/content
Chaves Alfaro, M., & Gaete Astica, M. (2019). La permanencia y exclusión estudiantil en las secciones nocturnas de los Colegios Técnicos Profesionales 2018. Revista Conexiones: Una experiencia más allá del aula, 11(1), 25–34. https://www.academia.edu/41662069/Revistaconexiones2019_a
Conejo, L. D. & Dobles, C. (2022). Colegios rurales en Costa Rica: Huellas de la desigualdad educativa. En M. Causa, E. Di Piero, & P. Santucci (Comps.), Educación secundaria, desigualdad, pandemia y horizontes postpandemia. Memoria Académica (pp. 69-87). Puntoaparte Ediciones. https://www.memoria.fahce.unlp.edu.ar/libros/pm.5503/pm.5503.pdf
Dirección de Educación Técnica y Capacidades Emprendedoras. (2022). Guía informativa del: Subsistema de la educación técnica profesional costarricense para el sector productivo - 2022. Ministerio de Educación Pública. https://www.mep.go.cr/sites/default/files/2023-10/4-guia-infomativa-sector-productivo-2022.pdf
Fernández Aráuz, A. (2014). Evolución de los indicadores de la educación técnica profesional en Costa Rica en el periodo 2000–2014. Ministerio de Educación Pública. https://www.mep.go.cr/sites/default/files/2024-06/ET_15.pdf
Jiménez Asenjo, W. & Gaete Astica, M. (2013). Estudio de la exclusión educativa y abandono en la enseñanza secundaria en algunas instituciones públicas de Costa Rica. Revista Electrónica Educare, 17(1), 105-128. https://doi.org/10.15359/ree.17-1.6 DOI: https://doi.org/10.15359/ree.17-1.6
Ministerio de Educación Pública. (2006-2014). Memoria institucional 2006-2014. La educación subversiva: Atreverse a construir el país que queremos. https://www.mep.go.cr/sites/default/files/2022-07/memoria-2006-2014.pdf
Ministerio de Educación Pública. (2022). Departamento de Estadística. https://www.mep.go.cr/acerca-del-mep/analisis-estadistico/estadisticas-educativas
Molina Jiménez, I. (2016). La educación en Costa Rica de la época colonial al presente. EDUPUC.
Programa Estado de la Nación. (2019). Séptimo informe estado de la educación (7.ª ed.). https://estadonacion.or.cr/?informes=informe-estado-de-la-educacion-2019
R Core Team. (2024). R: A language and environment for statistical computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Viena, Austria. https://www.R-project.org
Rivero, A. (2022, marzo 10). Estudio UNA: “La desigualdad educativa en la secundaria se reproduce en el ingreso a la universidad”. Semanario Universidad. https://semanariouniversidad.com/universitarias/estudio-una-la-desigualdad-educativa-en-la-secundaria-se-reproduce-en-el-ingreso-a-la-universidad/
Sarkar, D. (2008). Lattice: Multivariate data visualization with R. Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-75969-2 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-75969-2
Wickham, H. (2016). ggplot2: Elegant graphics for data analysis (2a ed.). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-24277-4_9 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-24277-4_9
Wickham, H., François, R., Henry, L., Müller, K., & Vaughan, D. (2023). dplyr: A grammar of data manipulation (Versión 1.1.4) [Paquete R]. CRAN. https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=dplyr
Wickham, H., Vaughan, D., & Girlich, M. (2024). tidyr: Tidy messy data (Versión 1.3.1) [Paquete R]. CRAN. https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=tidyr
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
Categories
License
Copyright (c) 2026 Ricardo Alvarado-Barrantes, Margarita Rojas-Pérez
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 Unported License.
1. In case the submitted paper is accepted for publication, the author(s) FREELY, COSTLESS, EXCLUSIVELY AND FOR AN INDEFINITE TERM transfer copyrights and patrimonial rights to Universidad Nacional (UNA, Costa Rica). For more details check the Originality Statement and Copyright Transfer Agreement
2. REUTILIZATION RIGHTS: UNA authorizes authors to use, for any purpose (among them selfarchiving or autoarchiving) and to publish in the Internet in any electronic site, the paper´'s final version, both approved and published (post print), as long as it is done with a non commercial purpose, does not generate derivates without previous consentment and recognizes both publisher's name and authorship.
3. The submission and possible publication of the paper in the Educare Electronic Journal is ruled by the Journal’s editorial policies, the institutional rules of Universidad Nacional and the laws of the Republic of Costa Rica. Additionally, any possible difference of opinion or future dispute shall be settled in accordance with the mechanisms of Alternative Dispute Resolution and the Costa Rican Jurisdiction.
4. In all cases, it is understood that the opinions issued are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the position and opinion of Educare, CIDE or Universidad Nacional, Costa Rica. It is also understood that, in the exercise of academic freedom, the authors have carried out a rogorous scientific-academic process of research, reflection and argumentation thar lays within the thematic scope of interest of the Journal.
5. The papers published by Educare Electronic Journal use a Creative Commons License:
The articles published by Educare Electronic Journal can be shared with a Creative Commons License: 
