Early leaving from education and training (ELET) is one of the headline objectives of the Europe 2020 strategy. This is due to the importance of the reduction of this problem in order to achieve an inclusive society with an economy based on knowledge (European Commission, 2010). As many research has pointed out, a high level of early leaving from education and training has negative effects both in economic and social outcomes, such as income, health patterns, criminal behaviour, social inclusion, democratic values, etc. (Lochner & Moretti, 2004; Bridgeland et al., 2006; Rumberger & Lim, 2008; Levin, 2009; Dickson & Harmon, 2011; Rumberger, 2011).

The ELET indicator contains alarm data in the case of southern countries in Europe. As Spisáková et al. (2016), analyses, countries such as Spain, Malta, Romania, Portugal or Italy have the highest rates of ELET. Although the headline target for 2020 is to reduce ELET rate in European Union below 10%, these countries have rates from 15% to 25%. In this sense, the Spanish case has special singularities and it hides important keys of this phenomenon. Firstly, Spain has the highest rate of ELET of all EU countries. From 2000 to 2009 the ELET rate in Spain was close to 30 – 32%. Since 2009 the ELET rate has notably reduce to a 20% in 2015. However, there is still a long progress to make in order to achieve the national (15%) and European target (10%) in 2020. Secondly, Spain has the largest difference at regional level. Some NUT2 regions are below the European objective of 10% whilst others have more than 30% ELET rate. Indeed, the differences between Spanish regions are largest than the differences between EU countries. In order to understand the factors of these differences, some authors have pointed to educational, economic and social contexts and individual variables (Cabus & De Witte, 2013; Alegre y Benito, 2014; Bayón Calvo, 2016). However, it is necessary to deepen the study of the dynamics of the ELET indicator, as well as analysing the composition of it. As the European Commission (2016) states, Spain has one of the lowest expenditure in education in terms of Gross Domestic Product of the European Union, as well as there is no systematization or assessment of the policies taken to overcome this problem.

Hence, this proposal has two main objectives. The first one is to analyse the evolution of the early leaving from education and training rate in the southern countries of the European Union, focusing on the differences between countries and regions. The second objective consists on analysing the specific case of Spain. In this sense, we study the internal composition of the ELET rate in Spain, focusing on the socio-demographic dynamics during the last fifteen years, in order to build up a socio-demographic profile of early school leavers. Also, we will outline the main factors of the ELET rates. This would be useful for the educational, social and economic policy, as we provide relevant information about where and who are the early school leavers, and when is more likely to appear this problem. To do that, we use variables such as gender, age composition, location, academic achievement, working activity, nationality, and parent’s education, among others.

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