In the year 2022, Germany has once again found itself with the fourth highest school dropout rate in the European Union, with a rate of more than twelve percent. This information is derived from the most recent data provided by Eurostat, the European statistics authority. These figures were obtained and made available by the Germany editorial network (RND, Monday). As of now, the data for 2023 is not yet available.
According to the 2022 data, the country with the highest rate of “early school and training leavers” (a term used in statistics to refer to school dropouts) was Romania, with an alarming rate of 15.6 percent. Trailing closely behind in second place was Spain, with a dropout rate of 13.9 percent, followed by Hungary at 12.4 percent. Germany’s school dropout rate was slightly less, coming in at 12.2 percent.
Although Germany’s dropout rate improved by 0.3 percentage points compared to the previous year, it still remained the fourth highest in the EU, just as it had been in 2021.
Looking at the bigger picture, the EU-wide average school dropout rate has seen an overall improvement from 10.5 percent in 2018 to 9.6 percent in 2022. Interestingly, back in 2018, Germany’s dropout rate was slightly better than the EU average, with a rate of 10.3 percent. However, this advantage was short-lived, as Germany’s rate has been consistently higher than the EU average since 2019.
