An education expert warned today that it was difficult to 'recover' a student in secondary school when he would have already left primary school without the necessary skills.

The warning was made as the first results of an analysis on early school leavers was issued.

Prof Carmel Borg, chairman of the National Observatory For Living With Dignity, which carried out the survey, said early school leaving is a national problem and an open wound for the country.

He noted that in the past 10 years, the rate of early school leavers dropped from 40 per cent in 2004 to 20% in 2014. But reducing those 20% was proving to be tough.

Malta's target is to drop to 10% by 2020. But there was a reduction of only 0.1 per cent last year, and Prof Borg said he feared the target would be achieved five years late, in 2025.

Early school leavers, he said, were not those young people who did not complete compulsory school but those aged between 18 and 24 who left school without the necessary skills.

He said the study had shown the impact of early school-leaving on wellbeing, with those who furthered their education found to be happier and better integrated in society.