Brussels, 11/04/2013 (Agence Europe) - Official statistics published on 11 April by the EU's statistics office, Eurostat, showed that a majority of EU member states have made progress on the two targets included in the EU's education strategy. Progress, however, has been slow and very varied between member states and on issues, such as gender. Women achieved better performances than men in both scoreboards. Androulla Vassiliou, European Commissioner for Education, Culture, Multilingualism and Youth, said: “The progress in achieving our education targets is a positive message in a time of economic uncertainty ... I encourage all member states to sustain their efforts so that we reach our 2020 targets; this is especially true for countries which have not made progress or whose performance was worse than in the previous year”. She noted that, in the future, jobs would require more qualifications than in the past and welcomed the fact that more young people were determined to make full use of their potential.
As part of the “EUROPE 2020” targets, the European Union set itself the goal of improving its education performance. Two targets were set out: to reduce the rate of early school leaving to below 10% and increase the percentage of young people with higher education (tertiary or equivalent) qualifications to above 40% by 2020. For the first target, the share of young people leaving school early now stands at 12.8% on average in the EU, down from 13.5% in 2011. With regard to the second target, in 2012, 35.8% of 30-34 year olds in the EU had completed tertiary education, compared with 34.6% in the previous year.
Early school leaving: nine countries go backwards. 12 member states (Austria, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Ireland, Lithuania, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia and Sweden) now have early school leaving rates below the 10% EUROPE 2020 target. Spain (24.9%), Malta (22.6%) and Portugal (20.8%) have the highest rates of early school leaving, even though progress has been made. Germany, Greece, Ireland, Latvia and the UK reduced early school leaving by at least one percentage point, but the rate increased in Bulgaria, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Luxembourg, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia and Sweden. When gender is examined, a lower proportion of women were early leavers from education and training than men (11.0% compared with 14.5%), a difference of 24%. The disparity is greatest in Cyprus (58%), Latvia (57%), Luxembourg (57%) and Poland (55%), where the school dropout rate for boys is more than twice as high as for girls.
Higher education graduates: women meeting targets - men still far behind. In 2012, the percentage of 30-34 year olds with a higher education degree was above the EUROPE 2020 target of 40% in 12 member states (Belgium, Cyprus, Denmark, Finland, France, Ireland, Lithuania, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and the UK). Poland and Slovenia are set to exceed 40% next year. The proportion of young people with a higher education qualification remains low in Italy (21.7%), Malta (22.4%), Portugal (27.2%), the Czech Republic (25.6%), Romania (21.8%) and Slovakia (23.7%). This rate is falling slightly in four member states. This fall did not affect Finland and Spain, two countries that are still above the target (from 46% in 2011 to 45.8% in Finland and from 40.6% to 40.1% in Spain), very slightly in Estonia, which is no longer, however, reaching the target (39.1% in 2012, as opposed to 40.3% in 2011). The situation is much more worrying in Bulgaria where the already low rate of 27.3% in 2011 fell even further in 2012 to 26.9%. Another significant fact is that the proportion of higher education women graduates is 27% higher than for men. 40% of women on average have a higher education diploma, as opposed to 31.6% for men. Latvia (+85%), Estonia (+79%), Slovenia (+68%) and Bulgaria (+67%) are the countries where disparities between men and women are the most significant.
During the European Council February 2013, the member states agreed to improve the results of young people at risk of leaving school early with poor basic skills by, for example, attempting to detect these young people early in the educational process and by providing them with individual support. Next month, the Commission will assess the measures taken by member states to attain the main targets set out as part of the “EUROPE 2020” strategy for growth and jobs. It will also produce recommendations for each country. The Commission will look at the most recent developments affecting early school leaving and higher education graduates in its next education and training follow-up report planned for next autumn. (IL/transl.fl)