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- In the EU the phenomenon is more severe outside urban centers. However, in countries like Germany and Italy the incidence of early school leaving exceeds 10% in cities.
- South-East (Romania) is the European region with the most early leavers in 2024
The European Union is approaching its 2030 target of reducing early school leaving to below 9%, but not all countries are progressing at the same speed and in the same direction.
In 2024, 9.4% of young Europeans aged 18 to 24 had left school with at most a lower secondary education qualification. This is almost 2 percentage points less than ten years earlier, when early leaving from education and training affected over 11% of young people.
A positive trend, driven particularly by Mediterranean countries—especially those on the Iberian Peninsula. Although the method of calculating the indicator has been updated over time, making historical data less comparable, the magnitude is clear. In 2014, in Spain, nearly 22% of young people had left school or training early; in Portugal, the figure was 17.3%. Today, the two countries stand at 13% and 6.6%, respectively, a decline of 8.9 and 10.7 percentage points.
Several other Southern European countries also recorded improvements of more than 5 percentage points, particularly Malta (-7.4 points), Greece (-6), and Italy (-5.2).
In recent years, some countries have shown a trend of increasing educational and school dropout rates. Over the decade, the incidence of early leaving has increased by more than 2 percentage points in Denmark (+2.3 points), Lithuania (2.5), Germany (3.4), and Cyprus (4.5). These figures are not perfectly comparable, as the calculation methodology has been adjusted over the decade.
However, a clear divide in underlying trends appears to be evident. Some countries, especially in Southern Europe, have significantly improved their performance in recent years; others show a much less clear trajectory, if not a possible deterioration. These are aspects that need to be monitored and taken into account when defining education policies for the entire continent.
While the Union as a whole is demonstrating a certain ability to achieve its objectives on early school leaving, first meeting the 2020 targets and now approaching those for 2030, the same cannot be said of all its member states.
The countries’ path towards the European objectives
For over a decade, European Union policies have identified reducing early school leaving as one of the key objectives for Europe’s competitiveness.
First, in 2010, the Europe 2020 strategy included the objective of reducing the dropout rate to below 10%. This goal was achieved at the European level between 2020 and 2021: during that period, the share of early leavers fell below the established threshold for the first time.
9.7% the early leaving rate in the EU in 2021.
In 2021, at the height of the Covid emergency, the education objectives were updated as part of the redefinition of the strategic framework for European cooperation in education and training. In this context, a resolution of the Council of the European Union in February 2021 lowered the EU target by one point, aiming for 2030.
“The share of early leavers from education and training should be less than 9%, by 2030”
– Council Resolution on a strategic framework for European cooperation in education and training towards the European Education Area and beyond (2021-2030), 21/2/2021
This is an even more challenging threshold, which on paper would seem within the Old Continent’s reach. By the time the pandemic ended in 2023, the rate of early school leavers had already fallen to 9.6%, falling further to 9.4% the following year. With more than five years to go, Europe is less than half a percentage point away from reaching the continent’s target.
As mentioned, however, the path over the last decade has not been straightforward for all European partners. In 2014, 19 out of 27 countries had reached the 10% target; 15 of these were already below the 9% threshold that would be set for the following decade. Ten years later, this figure rose to 20, 17 of which are already on track to meet the 2030 targets.
Amid this overall improvement, the decline of some countries compared to the European targets stands out. As can be seen from the map, while some countries have moved from the “red” color of unmet objectives to the “green” color of achieved targets, others have followed the opposite path.
Over the course of the decade, Cyprus has gone from an incidence of less than 9% (6.8% in 2014) to the current 11.3%. Germany, which had already reached its 2020 targets in 2014, reaching 9.5%, has consistently exceeded 12% over the last four years. Lithuania, while remaining below 9%, has gone from 5.9% in 2014 to the current 8.4%. In Denmark, the dropout rate was less than 9% in 2014 (8.1% that year), while in the last two years it has stood at 10.4%.
A short-term look at the phenomenon
Unfortunately, this long-term perspective (2014-2024) also reflects methodological variations that have occurred over time. Over the past two decades, EU institutions have made considerable efforts to harmonise methodologies across countries. However, aspects such as informal education and partial-level completion programs (courses of study that do not provide direct access to the next level, such as university) can be defined in ways that are subject to change and adjustment over time, based on country decisions, despite the presence of common guidelines.
Looking at a shorter time frame, to limit the impact of methodological changes,the trend towards an increase in the early leavers rate for some countries appears confirmed. Let’s examine the 2021-2023 period, a period largely exempt from the methodological revisions that affected all countries immediately after the pandemic. Furthermore, a new methodological change has also occurred for some countries in 2024, so it is interesting to examine the period between 2021 and 2023. In the immediate post-Covid period, growth was above one percentage point in Slovenia, Portugal, Finland, Romania, Lithuania, and the Netherlands.
In Germany, the rate went from 12.2% in 2021 to 12.5% in 2022 and 13% in 2023: an increase of almost one point in the three-year period, substantially confirmed with the 2024 survey. In Denmark, it went from 9.8% in 2021 to 10.4% in 2023.
Over the same period, several countries have also improved their dropout rate; the improvement was above one percentage point in countries such as Sweden, Slovakia, Poland, Italy, Luxembourg, and Bulgaria.
Comparisons between countries are crucial for monitoring countries’ progress in achieving the 9% target within this decade. At the same time, when it comes to socio-educational phenomena such as these, each country is not a monolith: early school and training dropouts do not affect all young people and all regions equally.
A key variable in this regard is also the peripherality of the area in which one lives. Those living in less urbanized contexts may have less access to higher education or training, especially where these types of services and opportunities are lacking. This aspect is clearly evident, for example, in the case of Italy’s inland areas, which systematically struggle more across all indicators regarding access to and quality of education.
At the continental level, this is particularly evident in adult learning, as highlighted in the European Commission’s latest Education and Training Monitor 2024. The countries that have the most difficulty engaging adults (25-64 years old) in adult learning programs are also those with the widest urban-rural divide.
Overall, the gap between rural (and suburban) and urban rates is wider in underperforming countries.
– European Commission: Directorate-General for Education, Youth, Sport and Culture, Education and training monitor 2024 – Comparative report, Publications Office of the European Union, 2024
This may be a symptom of a difficulty in some areas of the continent in developing an education and training system suited to the needs of the population. Let’s try to understand whether this problem also affects education and training for young people by analyzing the impact of regional disparities in early school leaving in the Old Continent.
The center-periphery divide in the phenomenon of early leaving
On average, in the European Union, the phenomenon is much more severe outside of large urban centers. In areas classified as urban centers, the 9% target has already been reached. In 2024, these densely populated areas saw an early school leaving rate of 8.3%. Outside of urban centers, the rate rises above 10% in less urbanized areas: 10.3% in towns and suburbs and 10.1% in rural areas.
Over the last decade, improvements have been recorded at European level regardless of the degree of urbanisation, but in a way that appears to be more noticeable in rural areas (-2.4 percentage points compared to 2014) than in more urbanised (-1.2) and intermediate (-1.5) centres.
These average trends, however, are not observed everywhere. First, in some countries, the incidence of early school leaving exceeds 10% in cities: Germany (12.4%), Malta (11.4%), Spain (11.3%), Italy (10.9%), and Austria (10.4%). Meanwhile, the phenomenon affects rural areas especially in Central and Eastern Europe: Romania (26.3%), Bulgaria (17.7%), Hungary (16.9%)—but also in Denmark (15.5%) and Spain (14.6%).
Second, over the decade, the declining trend in rural areas is particularly evident in Southern European countries, which are those that have seen the most significant improvements over the period. The early school leaving rate fell by more than 13 percentage points in rural Portugal between 2014 and 2024, by 11.6 points in rural Spain, by 11.5 points in rural Bulgaria, by 9.8 points in rural Greece, and by 5.4 points in Italy.
Conversely, Denmark, Lithuania, Germany, and Cyprus—the countries that have seen a decline in the last decade—are also those where the situation in rural areas has worsened the most with respect to early school leaving. In the less urbanized areas of Denmark, Lithuania, and Germany, the increase in the rate of early school leaving has exceeded 3 percentage points. However, even the more urbanised areas of these countries are not exempt from this worsening trend.
The trend in early school leaving therefore has regional implications that go far beyond individual country data and therefore require in-depth local analysis to better understand the situation, thus assessing the disparities that exist between the regions of the European Union.
Territorial gaps between European regions
Considering all regions of the Union, including those outside the European continent, the one with the highest incidence of early school leaving is French Guiana (29.4% in 2024). Also noteworthy in this regard are the Spanish city of Melilla (26%) and the Portuguese Azores (19.8%).
On the continent, excluding overseas and non-European territories, the phenomenon is most severe in the Eastern Balkans and Eastern Europe, particularly in Southeastern Romania (26.2%), Hungary’s Észak-Magyarország (21.6%), other Romanian regions such as Centru (21.6%) and Sud-Muntenia (19%), and Bulgaria’s Yugoiztochen (18.1%). The incidence is also high in Southern Europe, particularly in Spanish territories such as the Balearic Islands (20.1%) and the Region of Murcia (18.2%).
It’s noteworthy that several areas of Germany—along with other regions in southern Eastern Europe, including some in Romania (South-West Oltenia, Northeast), Spain (La Rioja, Andalusia), and Italy (such as Sicily)—have a higher 15% share of early leavers. These include Weser-Ems (18.1%), Koblenz (16.8%), Lower Saxony (16.1%), Schleswig-Holstein (16%), Lüneburg (15.7%), and the region surrounding the state capital, Berlin (15.5%).
The regions with the highest increase in dropouts over the decade are also German. At the NUTS1 level—the highest aggregation level of European regions—Thüringen (13.1% in 2024, 7 percentage points higher than ten years earlier), Niedersachsen (16.1%, +5.5 points), and Brandenburg (14.3%, +5.3 points) stand out. Moving down to the NUTS2 level—a finer level of analysis— the increases appear even more significant. Over 7 percentage points higher in regions such as Weser-Ems, Niederbayern, Unterfranken, and Giessen. It is noteworthy that, in most cases, these increases are observed not only with a long-term perspective (2014-2024), but often also with a short-term perspective (2021-2023), which is therefore less sensitive to methodological changes over time.
In Thüringen, the increase in this shorter period was 1.3 percentage points, and in Niedersachsen, 3.5 points, trends consistent with those of Germany as a whole. For the country as a whole, growth between 2021 and 2023 was almost one percentage point: from 12.3% to around 13%.
A phenomenon not to be underestimated for the development of the EU
In line with European objectives, the last decade has seen a significant improvement in the situation on our continent, with the share of young people leaving school with no more than a middle school diploma increasingly limited.
With the caution due to adjustments in the methodology 11.1% of young Europeans were in this situation in 2014; the share had fallen to 10% when the pandemic hit and has since continued to decline, reaching the current 9.4%. Given this trend, it is reasonable to assume that the goal of reducing the percentage below 9% by 2030 can be achieved.
At the same time, the picture is much less clear than European averages suggest. On the one hand, the situation has improved markedly in countries historically most affected by early school leaving, especially those in Southern Europe. On the other hand, signs of worsening are observed in some Central and Northern European countries, and gaps remain wide between urban centers and rural areas, as well as between individual regions within a single country.
There are also signs that the European indicator on early leaving fails to capture. School dropout is a complex phenomenon, difficult to analyze solely with the indicator of early leavers from education and training. This is just the tip of the iceberg: beneath the surface lies an “implicit” part of the phenomenon that is much more difficult to monitor.
This is what has been called “implicit dropout” in Italy: the share of young people who complete their studies without the skills corresponding to their educational level. In Italy, following the pandemic, the share of students in their final year of high school with completely inadequate skills has increased significantly, from 7.5% in 2019 to almost 10% in 2021 and 2022. In 2025, it stood at 8.7%, indicating that the educational emergency is not yet fully over, at least in this country.
Given these trends, equipping ourselves with tools to monitor even these hidden aspects of the phenomenon is more important than ever. Likewise, when discussing school dropout, we cannot afford to ignore a perspective that goes beyond national borders, examining trends from a local perspective. This is especially true where areas, such as rural ones, are unable to keep pace in terms of access to education for their young inhabitants. This is even more true when the problem affects not only the continent’s peripheral areas, but also its core regions.
In a global context where access to quality employment requires increasingly high-level skills, these regional disparities and the delay in improving educational levels can create two risks. On the one hand, they reinforce social and economic fractures, producing a multi-speed Europe, with regions able to integrate into globalization processes and others destined to remain on the margins of development. On the other, they ultimately undermine the European Union’s autonomy and development potential in an increasingly critical global context.
This article is published in collaboration with the European Data Journalism Network in the context of ChatEurope and is released under a CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.
Original source: https://www.openpolis.it/labbandono-scolastico-un-problema-in-crescita-per-alcuni-paesi-ue/.
