OECD: too little training, education gap widening
The annual report "Education at a Glance" put out by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has given poor marks to a number of countries. It shows that Germany's education system is becoming increasingly polarised, with more students at university but also more and more young people without vocational qualifications. Meanwhile, Spain has the highest proportion of poorly educated young people in the EU, the report concludes.
Equal opportunities non-existent in Spain
elDiario.es points to the real problem:
“Reading that we have a school dropout rate of 27 percent is like watching the rain fall. It's like knowing that our unemployment rate will always be double that of the rest of Europe no matter what. ... We accept it like a curse, like a natural or endemic phenomenon. But it's not. ... Most of those who fail at school come to school as 'failures'. Just as children from wealthy families come to school as 'successful'. The school dropout rate for children from socially vulnerable families is three times higher than that of the rest of the population. ... Our failure is not of an educational character, but of a social one. And the umpteenth education reform won't solve that.”
Education disaster in Germany
The report comes as a slap in the face for Germany, Deutschlandfunk comments:
“Together with the Czech Republic, Germany is the only country in the OECD in which the percentage of young people who have neither vocational training nor a higher education entrance qualification has risen in recent years. ... It doesn't help that things look better at the other end of the performance scale; the number of those who are particularly well qualified has also increased. ... The word 'worrying' is far too mild in view of such a large gap between well-educated and poorly educated young people. This is an educational disaster - not just from the point of view of those affected, but also for society as a whole.”