It’s morning and the school bell that starts lessons rings, but not for everyone.
More than one in 10 children in 2022 will have left school early. More precisely 11.5% of young people aged between 18 and 24, calculates Eurostat. It is the so-called phenomenon of school dropout, or early abandonment of the education path without obtaining a qualification. A phenomenon that brings with it a strong risk of social marginalization in the years to come.
The figure is down compared to the 2021 estimate, but still remains higher than the objective that Europe has set for 2030, which is 9%.
According to the photograph taken by Istat with the Noi Italia 2023 Report, early dropout from studies in Italy characterizes boys more (13.6%) than girls (9.1%) and is on average higher in the South (15 ,1%).
As the report The world in a classroom, published by Save the Children on the occasion of the reopening of schools, attests, among students with a migrant background there are greater scholastic delays, cases of dropout and school dropouts. While students of Italian origin late in the 2021/22 school year represented 8.1%, those with non-Italian citizenship were 25.4%.
However, it is not just school dropouts in the strict sense. Another pitfall is the implicit dispersion, which concerns children who complete their studies without possessing the necessary basic skills. A phenomenon exacerbated by the pandemic and which only began to show signs of stopping in 2023.
The difficulties in building a future
Those who leave school prematurely risk not having the skills required by the professional environment.
Precisely because inequalities are destined to widen over time, school dropout is linked to phenomena such as unemployment, poverty, social exclusion and deviance.
Italy is Neet’s black jerseyacronym of the English expression not in education, employment, or trainingin Europe, second only to Romania (19.8%). According to the latest Istat findings, in 2022, young people who do not work or study are estimated at 19.0% of the population aged between 15 and 29. In the South, the incidence is double compared to the Centre-North.
Furthermore, the indicators of young people’s well-being in Italy are at the lowest levels in Europe. In 2022, almost one in two young people between 18 and 34 years old has at least one sign of deprivation. The dimension with the greatest difficulties was that of education and work.
Us and Europe
The numbers of school dropouts in Italy are among the highest in Europe. In 2022 the country placed fifth among EU nations for early school leavers with almost 2 points above the average (9.6%). The previous year, Italy was third for dropouts with its 12.7%, after Spain (13.3%) and Romania (15.3%).
To counter this trend, the European Union has redefined its objectives aiming to lower the dispersion rate by 2030 which has been set at 9%.
The previous target of 10% was almost reached in 2019, with a European dropout rate of 10.2%. However, the Covid-19 pandemic has reversed the positive trend, requiring a new commitment from the EU.
Both in Italy and in Europe, the phenomenon of school dropout is in long-term regression. In 2005, before the great economic recession, one in five young people in Italy (22.1%) did not complete high school. Across Europe, Eurostat estimates, on average the school dropout rate has fallen from 16.9% in 2002 to 9.6% in 2022.
[grafico abbandono scolastico]
But then the Covid-19 pandemic arrived which exacerbated another type of school dropout, the implicit one.
Covid-19, sharp turning point
According to the Invalsi Report which, with its findings, measures the achievement of some basic skills, essential for learning, in 2023 there was a reduction of one percentage point in implicit school dropout. The positive news is that the negative effect of the pandemic should have stopped.
After an increase between 2019 and 2021 (from 7.5% to 9.8%), also due to long periods of suspension of in-person lessons, the share of students in a condition of implicit dropout at the end of the second education cycle saw a weak decrease in 2022 (9.7%) with an even more encouraging trend in 2023 (8.7%).
Differences between regions remain. Campania is the region in which scholastic fragility occurs most markedly (19%), affecting almost one student in five. The other regions in which there is a share of students in a condition of implicit dispersion greater than 10% are: Basilicata, Calabria, Sicily and Sardinia.
As regards the educational path of minors with a migratory background, returning to the findings of Save the Children, the pandemic in many cases has led to the interruption of the teaching of the Italian language and extracurricular activities, the lack of technological devices to follow lessons , the lack of social opportunities and school-family relationships.
The United States and absenteeism
Even in the United States the pandemic has changed the relationship between young people and school. As the New York Times reports, in the 4 years since the pandemic led to the temporary closure of schools, US education has struggled to recover on several fronts, from learning gaps to enrollment.
The most pervasive and stubborn problem today, however, is the sharp increase in student absenteeism, which continued for a long time after the reopening of schools.
Nationally, according to the most recent data from the American Enterprise Institute, about 26% of public school students were chronically absent last school year, up from a pre-pandemic level of 15%, where chronic absence is defined as the absence for at least 10% of the school year, equal to approximately 18 days.
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