Issue of School Dropouts 
School dropout rates are increasing across Europe and are a great cause of concern according to many governments. When the young generation is quitting school, very often they are moving away from the society to a life of anti social elements and possibly ending up with crimes. Therefore, Europe has to address the issue with high priority and find some permanent solution for the problem.
It is a shocking scenario and a sad indictment of the education in European Union that more than one out of ten children reject school. The causes of the dropout rates are many, like boredom, irrelevance of the curriculum to their lives, more often lack of support from the family and also unavailability or absence of staff in the schools. A conference was held by the European Forum for freedom in Education and people from 18 countries gave their views on what can be done to reserve the trend. They also presented their findings in front of the European Parliament.
Almost 20% children in Europe permanently drop out from the schools. This has led Ministers of Education to agree to bring the rate down by 9% in coming years. A huge effort will be needed by the Member States to substantially improve the European average. Portugal, Italy and Spain are the countries in Europe where the situation is extremely worse, with 45%, 26% and 29% dropout rate, respectively. Around 30% of children quitting education in Spain are below the age of 16. Spain has the highest rate of pupils failing to continue their basic education according to Organization for Economic Development (OECD). 12% of pupils was an average figure, unable to finish school at 16. As the statistics show, Portugal still has the highest level of school abandonment and also has the lowest level of students completing their secondary schooling. It was stated by experts that this situation could lead negatively in the economic crisis.
The European Union education Ministers have backed the Spanish presidency policy proposal to reduce the rate of school dropouts by 10% within 2020 and also make an increase in the number of university graduates with 40%.
