rep. Revista Española de Pedagogía

The purpose of this study was to determine the impact of a peer tutoring program to prevent of academic failure among a sample of first year students (N = 100) from the University of Granada. After building and selecting the measurement instruments, and assigning the first year students to either experimental (N = 50) or control (N = 50) group according to the postest cuasiexperimental design employed, the intervention consisted of a 10 tutoring sessions highly structured to first year students or tutees, given by last year and postgraduate students or tutors previously trained on a 4 sessions course. The results show differences in favour of the intervention group on grade points average, performance rate and success rate at the end of the first semester, at the end of the second semester and at the end of the third summons, and also on dropout rate. Therefore, this program contributes to the improvement of standard of quality in higher education: more efficacy, efficiency and utility. Francisco D. Fernández Martín, José Luis Arco Tirado, Fernando Justicia Justicia y María del Carmen Pichardo Martínez