Education: early leavers fall to 15.3% in Andalucia, the lowest in history

Data provided by the Economically Active Population Survey (EPA) from Spain's INE national statistics institute for 2022, show early leavers (people between 18 and 24 who quit their studies after obligatory secondary education, without obtaining further education qualifications: either the academic 'bachillerato' or vocational training FP) in Andalucía accounted for 15.3%, some 2.4% less than in the previous year.

This is an improvement from 2018 figures when Andalucía was 4% behind the national average, while in 2022 it was 1.4%.

In 2021, Andalucía managed to reduce further education dropout by 4.4 % compared to 2020, the largest drop in a year in history Andalucia, falling for the first time below 20% (17.7%).

This is the first time Andalucía has lower figures than Catalonia (16.9%) and Valencia (15.7%). The region also continues to have better results than Murcia, the Balearic Islands and Ceuta.

The Junta de Andalucía's minister of educational development and vocational training, Patricia del Pozo, said the data "reflects the Andalusian government's firm commitment to education". She pointed to the increase of 2.2 billion euros in the Junta's budget for education and the significant investment in teaching staff, with the addition of 5,000 more teachers in the school system.

"There are many ceilings that this government is breaking, such as thinking that we were in the last positions in the education indicators because we had to be there," said the minister.

Nationally, for the first time, early leaver rates among females worsened (9.7% to 11.2%), but in Andalucía it fell by 2.3% although it was still higher than the national percentage at 12%. Likewise, nationally the rate went down by 0.2% in males, while in Andalucía it decreased by 2.5%, to 18.4%

In 2018, 67.2% of the Andalusian population between 20 and 24 years old had a further education qualification. In 2022, that percentage rose to 75.9%, an increase of 3.6%.