The effect of leisure activities and school engagement on school attainment of youth

This paper aims to analyze the relations between social background, leisure activities, school attainment and school engagement. The main objective of this research is to examine whether leisure activities and school engagement can compensate for the effect of social background on school attainment. This research uses a sample of 2.056 10th grade students from 27 different centers within the city of Barcelona. Data processing is done by structural equation modeling. The results show that relational and digital activities are associated with an improvement in school attainment while sport and cultural activities are associated with an increase in emotional and cognitive engagement. Cultural activities are also related to a better behavioral engagement, a type of engagement that has a positive effect on school attainment and can compensate for the effect of gender and immigrant background on school attainment.