With 543,000 young people who left school after middle school in 2020, Italy ranks third in the EU for school dropout rates. This was noted by the CGIA which highlights that SMEs, especially in the North, have difficulty in finding highly specialized professionals. And in the next few years, with the advent of the so-called "digital revolution", these critical issues risk taking on even more worrying dimensions. According to Unioncamere of the one million and 280 thousand new hires expected by companies between July and September of this year, almost 31% will be difficult to find. There are about 400 thousand unfilled job positions. Early school leaving in Italy is 8 times higher than the so-called "brain drain". In fact, in 2020543,000 students dropped out of school prematurely compared to 68,000 with a medium-high qualification who went abroad for work. The causes of "flight" from school are mainly cultural, social and economic: children who come from socially disadvantaged backgrounds and from families with a low level of education are more likely to stop before completing the course of study that leads them to obtain at least the diploma. Sometimes the dropout can be caused by dissatisfaction with the available training offer. In this sense it should be emphasized the inclusive work carried out by the Vocational Education and Training institutes which have become a point of reference for students of foreign nationality,for those with disabilities and for students returning from previous school failures. In 2020 Italy ranked third among the 19 EU countries for early school leaving among young people between 18 and 24 years: 13.1% (543 thousand).
Only Malta (16.7%) and Spain (16%) are worse off. The EU average is 10.2% (almost 3 points less than in Italy). Between 2010 and 2020 the contraction of the phenomenon in Italy was 5.5%, almost in line with the EU average (-5.2%). The South records the highest levels of dropout: in Sicily 19.4%, then Campania (17.3%) and Calabria (16.6%) where, in 10 years, school dropout has increased by 0 , 6%. The most virtuous: Abruzzo (8%), Friuli VG (8.5%), Molise (8.6%) and Emilia R.
(9.3%). The Northeast is the area that suffers less from this phenomenon both for the percentage of dropouts (9.9%) and for the lowest number in absolute terms of premature "leaving" school (-77 thousand).
