SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE, 30 Jan. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The early educational dropout rate contracted again in the Canary Islands, going from 11.8% in 2021 to 11.7% in 2022, the lowest in the historical series, thus giving continuity to the downward trend registered in previous years, since in 2019 stood at 20.8% to decrease in 2020 to 18.2%.
Thus, between 2019 and 2022 this index has fallen by 43.7% on the islands and remains, for the second consecutive year, below the national average, which stood at 13.3% in 2021, and in 13 .9% last year.
The early leaving indicator is defined as the percentage of the population between 18 and 24 years of age who, after completing Compulsory Secondary Education (ESO), have not followed any type of study or training in the four weeks prior to the interview, according to the Ministry of Education and Vocational Training, points out the Ministry of Education in a note.
In the elaboration of this parameter, information from the Active Population Survey (EPA) is included, developed by the National Institute of Statistics (INE), and is framed in the European Strategy 2020, which is calculated with the Eurostat methodology from the annual means of quarterly data.
In the archipelago, the data by sex between 2021 and 2022 reveals that, in the case of male students, there was a decrease of 1%, going from 17% to 16%, while in the case of female students there was an increase of 1 .2% to 7.3% last year.
However, in the three years prior to 2022 the trend among women has been downward, going from 16.7% in 2019 to 14.7% in 2020 and 6.1% in 2021.
The Minister of Education, Universities, Culture and Sports of the Government of the Canary Islands, Manuela Armas, has indicated that “there are many conditions that influence the permanence of a student in the educational system, but there is no doubt that having an offer attractive and diverse for young people is decisive, especially in Basic Vocational Training”.
The data from recent years are, in part, the result of the actions carried out by the Government of the Canary Islands since the beginning of this legislature with the aim of enabling students to continue their training beyond ESO.
In this sense, the expansion and diversification of the Vocational Training offer in the Canary Islands stands out, as well as the measures implemented to reinforce attention to the diversity of the student body, among which is the increase in the teaching staff or the decrease in ratios at some levels of non-university education, in addition to the work carried out by the educational community through projects such as esTEla or PROA+, among other actions.
