Malta has the third-lowest number of tertiary-educated people aged 30 to 34 years among EU member states. Photo: Chris Sant Fournier

Malta still has a long way to go to meet the EU’s stringent education targets and remains one of the worst performers, according to the latest data.

Although substantial progress has been made since 2002, when EU governments agreed on binding targets to be met by 2020, the island still lags behind.

Eurostat data released yesterday shows that, until last year, Malta had the third-lowest number of tertiary educated people aged 30 to 34 years among all the EU member states.

With only 26.6 per cent of those in the 30-34 age bracket having tertiary education, Malta is almost seven percentage points away from reaching its targets in five years’ time.

Only Italy (23.9 per cent) and Romania (25 per cent) had lower results than Malta. On the other hand, 12 member states have already met or exceeded their 2020 national targets in this area.

The Baltic state of Lithuania has had the biggest success, with 53.3 per cent of its 30-34-year-olds having tertiary education. It is followed by Luxembourg (52.7 per cent) and Cyprus (52.5 per cent).

Malta is also not doing very well in reducing the number of early school leavers – those leaving school after lower secondary education – to 10 per cent by 2020.

Malta is not doing well in reducingthe number of early school leavers to10 per cent by 2020

With only five years remaining to achieve this target, Malta still has the second-highest number of early school leavers in the EU, at 20.4 per cent.

Though the island has managed to substantially lower its number of early school leavers, which in 2006 stood at 32.2 per cent, it still has the second-highest number of people lacking higher education in the EU. Spain is the only member state with a worse record than Malta’s, with 21.9 per cent early school leavers in 2014.

Many countries have already achieved their 2020 targets in this regard. According to Eurostat, in 2014 the lowest proportions of early school leavers were in Croatia (2.7 per cent), Slovenia (4.4 per cent), Poland (5.4 per cent) and the Czech Republic (5.5 per cent).

Last year, the share of early school leavers was lower for women than men in all member states except Bulgaria.