SPAIN (Press release) - According to the European statistics office, Eurostat, 31.2% of 18 to 24 year olds leave school or abandon their studies before they have finished, against the European avergae of 14%. As one newspaper put it: 'Not only is Spain champion of unemployment, it is also champion of school un-education'. But that's not all. Malta is at the very bottom of the list (36.8%) and Spain is level with Portugal, but things have become even worse: the truth is that early leaving was up by 7.2% from 2000 to 2009.>
These facts have elicited trhe opinion of the European Commissioner for Education, Androulla Vassiliou, whose department has no direct competence in the matter, which is in the exclusive hands of Member States. It is a big mistake to cut back on education budgets during a cisis, she says, as this represents an investment rather than an expense, and those countries that do so will find it much more expensive to bdeal with the large number of unemployed in the future.
"Reducing the share of early school leavers across Europe by just 1 percentage point would create nearly half a million additional qualified young people each year," says Vassiliou. "Most EU countries have made progress in reducing the number of young people leaving school with low qualifications, but more needs to be done." She did not mention Spain, which has certainly not made progress.
The Commissioner also pointed out that the enormous differences in the figures that exist between the countries, also exist within them. This time she used Spain as an example: "Whereas the national average is of 31.2% for the country as a whole, early school leaving in the Basque region is14%, much closer to the European Union objective of 10% by 2020."
As a result, the European Commission for Education, Culture, Multilingualism and Youth has therefore launched an action plan to reduce early school leaving that includes a number of measures such as an increase in sports, arts and music, as well as, perhaps more controversially, segregation in schools (immigrants, etc.), pursuit of school truancy, fostering flexible learning and more generally, to make education more attractive. In those lines, the Commission made a special point of the need to follow up on those students that repeat a year's class and those whose mother tongue is different from the country in which thy're being educated.
The proposals will be studied by the Ministers of Education of Member Nations, who are scheduled to hold a meeting in May.
(Editorial on this vital subject coming soon.)
These facts have elicited trhe opinion of the European Commissioner for Education, Androulla Vassiliou, whose department has no direct competence in the matter, which is in the exclusive hands of Member States. It is a big mistake to cut back on education budgets during a cisis, she says, as this represents an investment rather than an expense, and those countries that do so will find it much more expensive to bdeal with the large number of unemployed in the future.
"Reducing the share of early school leavers across Europe by just 1 percentage point would create nearly half a million additional qualified young people each year," says Vassiliou. "Most EU countries have made progress in reducing the number of young people leaving school with low qualifications, but more needs to be done." She did not mention Spain, which has certainly not made progress.
The Commissioner also pointed out that the enormous differences in the figures that exist between the countries, also exist within them. This time she used Spain as an example: "Whereas the national average is of 31.2% for the country as a whole, early school leaving in the Basque region is14%, much closer to the European Union objective of 10% by 2020."
As a result, the European Commission for Education, Culture, Multilingualism and Youth has therefore launched an action plan to reduce early school leaving that includes a number of measures such as an increase in sports, arts and music, as well as, perhaps more controversially, segregation in schools (immigrants, etc.), pursuit of school truancy, fostering flexible learning and more generally, to make education more attractive. In those lines, the Commission made a special point of the need to follow up on those students that repeat a year's class and those whose mother tongue is different from the country in which thy're being educated.
The proposals will be studied by the Ministers of Education of Member Nations, who are scheduled to hold a meeting in May.
(Editorial on this vital subject coming soon.)
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