Another scholastic year is drawing to a close. For many students the summer break will be a welcome reprieve before they embark on an exciting new phase in their educational process. Sadly for others, their schooling days are, by and large, over and, hence, they must start preparing themselves for some pretty stiff decisions on what comes next.
Nowadays, anyone leaving school at 16 is, correctly so, considered an early school-leaver. These relatively young teenagers, generally with questionable standards of education, will most probably start to look for work, plunging head first into what is really and truly nothing more than their very first real taste of the adult world.
Many countries annually face a fresh cohort of young people who complete only their compulsory education, abandoning their studies without some form of specialised certification. These youths present a veritable challenge not only in economic terms but also because of the possible attendant social implications. Expert research suggests that early school-leaving is a long-term process that is influenced by both school and out-of-school experiences. Evidently, students who leave school “prematurely” are more likely to be unemployed and earn less over their working lives. As the labour market continues to trend towards a much higher-skilled labour force, it will continue to make unskilled labour even more economically unattractive.
For some time, the European Commission has been sounding the alarm on illiteracy and early school-leavers. It has been estimated that one in six 15-year-olds in Europe lacks the basic reading and writing skills needed on the job market. This does not compare well when one considers that the rate in Korea is six per cent, 10 per cent in Canada and 14 per cent in Japan. This implies that a third of Europe’s adult workforce (about 80 million people) are estimated to have low or basic literacy skills.
In view of all this, the European Union has for some time begun to tackle this persistent phenomenon. In 2003, EU member states agreed to cut the share of early school-leavers to below 10 per cent of all 18- to 24-year-olds. This target has not yet been reached. Far from it. The percentage remains stuck at about 20 per cent.
As part of the 2020 objectives, early school-leaving will be one of the main targets attempting to lower the rate of school-leavers while raising the levels of people who successfully complete tertiary education. This would imply a collective investment that aims towards improving the agenda for new skills and jobs. The emphasis will be for continued training and retraining that stimulates long-term personal development and increased labour mobility.
Malta has its work cut out in this field. Successive administrations over the last 20 years have invested millions of euros in re-establishing a sense of order in the educational sector. Too many experiments in this sector in the late 1970s and 1980s have had lingering effects to this day. This called for a complete rethink of our educational system. The challenges were both infrastructural and academic. Many new schools have been built and a range of educational institutions catering for our revitalised economy have been set up. In the last few years we have also seen a complete revamp of our national curriculum along with a series of reforms that are slowly but surely transforming our educational sector on many levels.
And, yet, the latest statistics demonstrate that in the area of continued training Malta has a lot to catch up with. Malta has more than twice the EU average of early school-leavers. While the EU average hovers at about 15 per cent, Malta’s average of early school-leavers stands at about 31 per cent. Another two countries, Spain and Portugal, share this average, which is a significantly high figure.
Malta has already made significant strides in this area. Within a span of nine years (2000-2009) we have managed to reduce this figure by a third, making us one of the countries that have succeeded in reducing the number of early school-leavers at a fast pace. In fact, our performance has only been surpassed by that of Cyprus. This is concrete evidence that we are steadily moving in the right direction.
So what happens to Europe’s early school-leavers? The results are a mixed bag. There are especially large numbers of unemployed early school-leavers. On average, the rate in the EU is about 48 per cent. Countries with an extremely high proportion of unemployed early school-leavers include Slovakia (80 per cent), Bulgaria (73 per cent) and Hungary (71 per cent). At the other end of the scale, Malta has the highest rate of employed early school-leavers at about 74 per cent. This may indicate a fairly robust economy and the typical flexibility of the Maltese worker.
Clearly, early school-leaving is a complex problem that cannot be solved by educational means alone. There a multitude of factors that influence the life choices of every single individual. There is no doubt we Maltese place great value on the benefits of a sound education that ensures a stable economy and reinforces one’s lifelong personal development. Yet, it is also true that much talent is being wasted as the figures reveal. There are no shortcuts and, beyond inspirational teaching, motivation, confidence and a sense to achieve remain key to one’s successful future.
info@carolinegalea.com