Belgium: 50% of immigrants drop out of high school

About half of immigrant youth of Turkish or North-African origin drop out of high school before getting a diploma.  The cause is the low social-economic circumstances of the youth, the other language and the late entrance into high school.  This is according to a study of the Open Univesity of Brussels.

Less than 20% of boys and less than 25% of girls of Turkish and North-African origin start higher education.  By ethnic Belgians that's 57% of boys and 71% of girls.

More than 40% of Turkish and North-African youth begin secondary education after the age of 12, which means they already have a gap to fill.

The researchers pointed out that it's impossible to catch up on such gaps later on.

Source: HLN (Dutch)

3 comments:

Evan said...

It is interesting that even among the Muslim youth more women than men enter higher ed, something that is going on all over the industrialized world (including, apparently, among indigenous Belgians).

John Sobieski said...

I thought American dropout rates were bad, but I think those are even worse except for our most black cities.

Esther said...

Evan,

Yes, it is. I don't have statistics to pull out, but I think in general in the Muslim community in Europe, women have more chance of going on to higher education, as well as of finding a job. During the French Intifada I read interviews of Muslim boys and girls and their attitudes were completely different.

John,

I hadn't thought of that.. and after your comment I looked it up. There isn't "one" statistic that can be looked up, but I did find this:


According to many estimates, today's teenagers are dropping out of school at an alarming rate -- about 30 percent across the board, a statistic that is close to what it was in the 1970s. African-Americans and Latinos drop out at rates around 50 percent.
(CNN)

So I'm not sure how much the situation in the US is better than in Belgium.