A very worrying statistic emerged this week on Eurostat, revealing that Malta had the highest amount of early school leavers in the European Union in 2020.

In 2020, the highest shares of early leavers from education and training were recorded in Malta (16.7%), Spain (16%), Romania (15.6%), Italy (13.1%) and Bulgaria (12.8%).”

The share of 'early school leavers’ is a term that refers to early leavers from education and training (aged 18-24).  The indicator shows the percentage of the population aged 18-24 with at most a lower secondary education and who were not in further (formal or non-formal) education or training during the four weeks preceding the time when the survey was carried out.

The country has actively been working to tackle this issue, and indeed some measure of success has been recorded. The rate of early school leavers has decreased over the years, going from 23.8% in 2010 down to 16.7% in 2020.

That is not a small decreased. Indeed the figure went down 0.5% since 2019, showing that measures are also working in the short term.

However, in data released last year Malta was not the country with the highest percentage, it was Spain, meaning that Spain has seen more improvement between 2019 and 2020 than Malta has.

While the government must be applauded for managing to reduce the amount of early school leavers, and for even launching a strategy to help tackle the situation, more must be done.

We must not only work on identifying the reasons people stop their education early, we must try and entice parents to push their children more to keep on learning, and also help children truly understand the importance of continuing their education or training.

In today’s day and age, education and training is more important than ever before. Even when in employment, continuing to train our skills or learn new ones, or even expand our knowledge is more important that it has ever been.

In the past, jobs would likely stay the same for many year. But look at today’s job market. Technology is constantly changing and evolving. The concept of what a job was in our grandparent’s time is very different to today. People are less likely to stick with the same job for a lifetime, and would likely switch jobs many times, something which in the past might have been frowned upon. That is now considered the norm.

If people are not able to evolve with the times and evolve through further training or educating themselves, it is unlikely they will get that promotion they have long chased after, or get a better paying job.

We need to entice our children to keep on learning throughout their lives.

Indeed the government’s push for lifelong learning shows that it understands the reality of today’s world. It must keep on working along those lines, enticing people to further their education as much as possible. It is never too late to take that course, pick up that book or train with an expert.

One hopes the government’s strategy to tackle early school leaving will be a success.