The study of school failure continues to deserve the attention of researchers because even though the school flow with more students approved and promoted to subsequent grades has been consolidating, the intensity of this dynamic is not the same when considering the number of graduates, mainly in elementary school. In addition, the suffering generated and experienced in school relationships, especially due to learning difficulties, is witnessed and reported by clinicians, deserving the attention of health professionals, especially psychologists.

Therefore, it is necessary to attent for other ways to build the relationship between clinical psychology and the school, working with a concept of school difficulty and failure that focuses not only on the student, but also on the other contextual factors that may interact for its manifestation. In this sense, the need to conduct studies that address school failure is highlighted, understanding it as a complex and multifaceted phenomenon, whose manifestation can lead to other important clinical events, such as drug abuse, conduct problems and school dropout, among others.

Thus, the present study aims to evaluate individual, family and school factors and their interrelation with the production of school failure in adolescents who are attending elementary school, with a view to building an explanatory model based on empirical data. To this end, an exploratory study with a mixed and transversal approach was proposed, in which adolescents regularly enrolled in elementary level in schools in the city of São Leopoldo-RS participated, who had a history of school failure (distortion between age and grade / year that exceeds two or more years), their families (mother, father or legal guardian) and their teachers. For each adolescent with school failure, another of the same sex and school, but without the same record, was selected to compose the comparison group.

In a second step, focus groups were held to assist adolescents, families and teachers to discuss the experience of school failure. The extra and intra-school processes associated with this phenomenon were analyzed quantitatively, to identify individual, family and school risk factors, and qualitatively, to deepen and understand their specificity. With the association of different methodological approaches and the adoption of the systemic framework, it is expected to contribute to an understanding of school failure more faithful to its complexity.

Keywords: school failure; elementary school; adolescence.