Share of early school leavers rises in Hungary, drops in EU

The share of “early school leavers” (young people aged 18-24 leaving early from education and training) has steadily decreased in the EU over the last 10 years, from 13% in 2012 to 10% in 2022. But still, there is some way to go to reach the target of reducing the rates of early school leavers at the EU level to below 9% by 2030, said Eurostat, the statistical office of the EU. (More about Hungary's 'performance' below.)

Data show that more young men left education and training early than women in 2022, 11% of men vs 8% of women. The share of men decreased from almost 15% in 2012 to 11% in 2022. Regarding young women, the share fell from almost 11% in 2012 to 8% in 2022.

As you can see on the right-hand graph below, Hungary tied with Bulgaria on the second worst spot among women, and had the sixth highest early leaver rate among males.

Compared with 2012, two-thirds of all EU members reported a smaller share of early leavers in 2022, except for Czechia, Denmark, Germany, Estonia, Luxembourg, Hungary, Austria, Slovakia and Sweden, which reported small increases (the highest being around +2 pp).

In 2022, the EU members that reported the lowest shares of early leavers from education and training were Croatia (2%), Ireland, Slovenia and Greece (each 4%), Poland and Lithuania (each 5%). (There is a note, however, in Eurostat's data series saying the figures for Croatia have "low reliability".)

In contrast, the highest shares were recorded in Romania (15.6%), Spain (13.9%), Hungary (12.4%), Germany (12.2%) and Italy (each 11.5%).

Eighteen EU members have already met the EU-level target for 2030 for this indicator: Belgium, Czechia, Ireland, Greece, France, Croatia, Cyprus, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Austria, Poland, Portugal, Slovenia, Slovakia, Finland and Sweden. 

How is Hungary doing in this metric then?

Well, it depends how you look at the numbers.

For instance, the rate of early school leavers dropped by over 30% between 1997 and 2022. So, that's great, right? Er, we'll see.

What is not so great is that compared both to 2012 and 2002, i.e. going back 10 and 20 years, the percentage of early leavers from school and training in the 18-24 age group showed growth in 2022.

Last year, the increase was 1.6% compared to 2002 and 5.1% compared to 2012.

To see whether these are really such bad figures, we should take a look at the same 10-yr and 20-yr comparisons in the European Union.

Frankly, we shouldn't have. Because the finding shows that the changes in Hungary are not simply bad - they are horrendous.

Cover photo: Getty Images