(25 April 2018) – Today, Eurostat publishes the most recent data for the EU and its Member States on achievement against the two Europe 2020 education headline targets.
One of Europe 2020 strategy’s targets is that at least 40% of 30-34-year-olds in the EU should have completed tertiary education by 2020. This share continued to steadily increase, from 23.6% in 2002 when the series started to 39.9% in 2017. Meanwhile, the share of early leavers from education and training (aged 18-24) has steadily decreased in the EU, from 15.3% in 2006 to 10.6% in 2017.
In 2017, at least half of the population aged 30 to 34 had completed tertiary education in Lithuania (58.0%), Cyprus (55.8%), Ireland (53.5%), Luxembourg (52.7%), as well as Sweden (51.3%). At the opposite end of the scale, the lowest proportions were observed in Romania (26.3%), Italy (26.9%) and Croatia (28.7%).
In 2017, the lowest proportions of ‘early school leavers’ were observed in Croatia (3.1%), Slovenia (4.3%), Poland (5.0%) and Ireland (5.1%), while the highest shares were recorded in Malta (18.6%), Spain (18.3%) and Romania (18.1%).