Renaming the school failure

Abstract The purpose of this article was to investigate the meaning attributed by students, parents and teachers to the term school failure and to point out others that could replace it. A cross - sectional exploratory and cross - sectional study was carried out, involving 65 students, 66 parents and 58 teachers from the São Leopoldo / RS primary school system, who answered a brief questionnaire. The results indicated that most of the students and parents blamed the student for the disapprovals, while the teachers emphasized the multicausality of the phenomenon (individual, family, school, society). The expressions most often referred to by students to replace the term were lack of interest, poor academic performance and learning difficulties. Parents and teachers indicated expressions of low school performance and neglect, neglect of politics and society with education. Teachers also suggested the term education challenges, which inspires the idea of overcoming difficulties and does not fall on a single system. A small number of participants considered the term school failure to be adequate.