One in six Azorean children in Ribeira Grande drops out of school or skips school.

One in six children in primary schools in Ribeira Grande drops out or skips classes frequently, said the president of the Azores municipality, responsible for the first municipal plan to combat truancy and school dropout on the island.

The Azores is the second region in Europe with the highest rate of early school leaving (21.7%), and this phenomenon is measured by counting young people aged 18 to 24 who left school before completing secondary education.

But it is the result of a series of situations that began many years ago, sociologist Fernando Diogo told Lusa, pointing to poor performance and school truancy as early signs of danger.

In Ribeira Grande, there are numerous cases of school dropouts in the first years of school, municipal president Alexandre Gaudencio noted in an interview with Lusa.

The mayor asked the head of the municipality, who “keeps statistics negative,” to conduct a study that revealed “a completely new phenomenon” and caused alarm: “Our dropout and absenteeism rate in the 1st cycle is 16%, which is not entirely common.”

This phenomenon is most noticeable in the fishing villages of Rabo de Peixe and Porto Formoso, among students from poorer families, many of whom live in social quarters built by the municipality.

The Escola Básica Integrada de Rabo de Peixe puts forward explanations for this high level of abandonment. Executive Board President Andre Melo recalled that the survey was conducted “in an atypical year,” following the pandemic, after students were isolated at home.

When schools reopened, parents remained fearful, “and the return to classes was very gradual,” he said, assuring that the situation had improved and that current cases were mainly due to emigration.

There, children begin to disappear from the 5th grade, but “the big problem is in the 3rd cycle,” when “many students have little motivation to come to school,” he admitted. In Rabo de Peixe, no one is surprised when a student wanders the hallway when he should be in class, or announces that he wants to leave early.

The literature points to several reasons for reluctance to go to school, emphasized Fernando Diogo, also a professor at the University of the Azores and a researcher at the Interdisciplinary Center for Social Sciences (CICS).

“When young people are faced with their difficulties on a daily basis, they tend to give up,” the teacher explained. In such cases, the family can make a difference.

The researcher added that parents with low levels of education and difficulties in perceiving school as a means to a better life are also often associated with dropping out.

The “First Municipal Plan to Combat Truancy and School Dropout”, presented at the beginning of this school year, stipulates that if “a student does not appear at school for some time, this must be immediately reported to the municipality”, which sends a Letter to the orphanage “to try to understand what is happening,” the mayor explained.

Alexandre Gaudencio said that these technicians had already been called by the Rabo de Peixe school: “We live on a small island and in a municipality where we know almost everyone,” he said, emphasizing that the technicians know almost all the families and “sometimes everyone, what is needed is a reminder to solve the problem.”

According to the National Institute of Statistics, the early school leaving rate in the Azores (21.7%) is almost three times higher than the national average (8%). A difference that sociologist Fernando Diogo said “no one can explain” and that is why he came up with a project that uses as a hypothesis the characteristics of the social structure of the Azores, where there is more poverty and less education among the population.

In 2022, more than one in four Azoreans lived in poverty (26.1%), while at the national level the figure was 17%, recalled Fernando Diogo.

While on the continent the majority of the population have at least the 9th year of schooling, in the Azores the situation is exactly the opposite: the majority stopped studying before reaching the 7th grade, regional education minister Sofia Ribeiro told Lusa.

The Azores regional government unveiled an Education Strategy last month that aims to reduce early school leaving rates from 21.7% to 15% by 2030 and increase the proportion of the population completing at least 9th grade.