In 2016 and 2017, the Canary Islands were below the state average in early school dropout. However, in 2018 and 2019 it has shot up again, standing, according to the EPA of the fourth quarter of 2019, at 20.8 percent, three and a half points more than the state average.
The European Strategy 2020 established among its objectives to reduce early school dropout below 10 percent in the EU and 15 percent in the Spanish State. In a decade, we halved the results (2008, 34.1% - 2017, 17.5%), and if we had followed the path of the decade 2007-2017 we would be at 12.9 percent in 2020.
But, again, the trend has been cut short.
A clear sign that these figures bring to the table an issue that worries our society, and which has been echoed these days by the media, is that the plenary session of the Parliament of the Canary Islands has addressed this week in depth the problem we face as a community.
From absenteeism one usually goes to frustration and school dropout. From a socio-educational issue we move to a serious social problem, where the lack of academic preparation is joined by the scarce options for insertion in the labor market, the few expectations of retraining and all this leads to a generation with scarce life expectations.
For this reason, in many cases of dropout and school failure it is essential to raise self-esteem, that people feel valued and socially necessary.
Training is a long-distance race, which requires perseverance, constancy, enthusiasm, sacrifice and support, a lot of family and social support. When these supports are non-existent and the moments of tiredness, boredom, frustration arrive, and the adolescent has to face them alone, the disaffection towards the educational system begins, absenteeism, which concludes in school dropout.
And here we take into account the Canary Island population aged 18 to 24 who have not completed intermediate vocational training or baccalaureate and do not follow any type of training after compulsory secondary education.
We are surpassed by the Balearic Islands, Murcia and Andalusia. At the other extreme, the Basque Country (6.7%), Madrid (11.9%), Asturias (12.4%) and Galicia (12.6%), Cantabria, Aragon, Navarra and Castilla y León (all below 15%). Countries such as Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, France, Poland, Greece or Ireland are already below 10 percent.
A problem of today, if we do not put a solution, is prolonged in time and becomes entrenched, becoming a problem of tomorrow.
The reasons that we could adduce are multiple and varied, therefore the solution cannot be unique.
It is evident that the place and the family where each person has been born is not indifferent to this matter. The poverty rates in the Canary Islands are still embarrassing. Therefore, the socioeconomic origin is another important variable.
The level of education of the parents, the cultural environment in the family, also mark, in general, the expectations of the families and the students themselves. Thus, the generational burden is another variable to take into account.
The environment is fundamental. Depressed neighborhoods, without attention to their needs, without cultural, sports, leisure offer, which feel excluded, are a breeding ground for absenteeism and abandonment. Unemployment, poverty and social exclusion are part of the problem and the low self-esteem of many of these people.
Our productive system, based on tourism and services and construction, has generally raised few qualification requirements, which has facilitated the transfer from schools to the scaffolding or work in the hospitality industry. Therefore, there we have another variable, that of building a more diversified productive system, which in turn requires greater specialization and qualification.
Precarious and low-skilled employment contributes very little and will influence retirement.
Therefore, little bread for today and hunger for tomorrow.
The offer of Vocational Training has not been characterized precisely by being a promoter of new forms of production and conducting attractive studies. We have limited ourselves to repeating what there is.
There are multiple causes behind school dropout; by remedying them in a transversal way, perhaps we could achieve better results for the future.
Therefore, measures must be taken immediately within the education system to address the problem of school dropout with a series of incentive measures aimed at facilitating access to qualifications through second chance programs or by making curricular adaptations.
That is what I proposed in the last plenary session of Parliament to the Minister of Education, including among the proposals of Podemos Canarias the adoption of labor measures, relating the return to studies with some levels of labor insertion in internships, and even economic measures, with aid for school materials, transportation or internships.
Other measures could be to increase the supply of publicly owned places from 0-3 years to start early care, compensate for inequalities and socialize students; individualized attention to students with educational needs or ensure that the social rights of the population, such as citizenship income, are a priority of this government in its relentless fight against poverty and social exclusion.
Along with educational measures, being a multifaceted problem, it is also essential to guarantee a healthy and sufficient diet for the entire population, improve the salary and working conditions of workers to positively influence family and personal well-being. Because, sometimes, being a working poor person forces more members of the family to contribute to the maintenance of the same even at the cost of abandoning their studies.
Also the right to decent housing favors the rooting of families in an environment and generates stability and we have to ensure that children and youth, the 8 islands and the 88 municipalities of the Canary Islands, can access in equal conditions to cultural, sports, leisure and free time activities in the afternoon.
Promoting associationism, participating in cultural and sports circuits, promoting learning (as well as educational reinforcements), promoting reading, all these are measures that favor social cohesion and improve self-esteem. And these measures require enormous coordination of town councils, island councils, the Government of the Canary Islands and civil society.
The educational and cultural offer throughout life is fundamental, so that people reconnect with the need and desire to learn, to improve, to retrain.
If the education of a person needs the whole tribe and not only the school institution, the prevention against failure, absenteeism and school dropout also needs the whole tribe, and, with the alarms set, as a social emergency that it is.
In short, we must address the problems looking for the deep causes and seeking solutions that are not temporary, but generally structural: poverty, housing, generational burden, insufficient response from the education system and the social structure and low social expectations.
The education system is not very flexible and makes it unattractive for those who have abandoned it prematurely to return, so, in line with walking along the path marked by the Canary Islands Education Law in this regard, it is necessary to establish some specific more flexible itineraries, curricular adaptations and teachings linked to work practice for this type of students, so that their return to resume their studies, apart from a need, becomes something attractive.
Manuel Marrero Morales
Spokesman of the Parliamentary Group Sí Podemos Canarias
