Early school leaving fell last year to 12.8%, 0.2 percentage points lower than in 2024, confirming the downward trend and representing the lowest annual figure in the historical series.
Furthermore, when comparing the data with 2015, when the dropout rate stood at 20%, there has been a decrease of 7.2 percentage points, according to educational data from the Labour Force Survey published by the Ministry of Education, Vocational Training and Sports. With these figures, the gap with respect to the European Union average (9.4% in 2024) is reduced to 3.4 percentage points. In 2015, it was 9 points.
Early school leaving is the percentage of people aged 18 to 24 who have not completed upper secondary education (intermediate vocational training, basic education, or upper secondary education) and who were not enrolled in any type of training in the four weeks prior to data collection. Last year, this rate stood at 13%.
By gender, in 2025 the difference between the dropout rate for men (15.9%) and women (9.5%) was very significant at 6.4 percentage points. In the case of men, it increased by 0.2 points compared to 2024, while for women it continued to decline, this time by -0.5 points. Ten years ago, in 2015, the difference between the two genders was 8.2 points.
Population aged 20-24
The percentage of the population aged 20-24 who have attained at least upper secondary education reached 80.4% in 2025, an increase of 11.9 percentage points compared to 2015 (68.5%) and 0.5 percentage points compared to 2024. Compared to the European average, Spain's figure was 11.9 percentage points lower in 2015, while in 2025 it had decreased to 4.7 percentage points, based on the latest available European average of 85.1% in 2024.
As with the dropout rate, the gender gap in this case is very significant. In 2025, the percentage of women aged 20-24 who completed at least upper secondary education was 85.1%, 9.1 percentage points higher than the percentage of men.
Population aged 25-34
Furthermore, 52.5% of the 25-34 age group attained higher education, a decrease of 0.1 percentage points compared to 2024, placing it above the 2024 European average (44.1%). The percentage of women, 58.7%, stands out, clearly exceeding that of men, 46.6%, by 12.1 percentage points.
In recent years, the Ministry of Education, Vocational Training and Sports has implemented various initiatives to reduce the early school leaving rate, one of the Government's objectives. In addition to the implementation of programmes for students with more difficulties such as PROA+, in which 360 million euros has been invested, the transformation of Vocational Training has meant a new window for young people towards quality and well-paid jobs, which encourages them to remain in the education system.
Non official translation
Student in a library