The growing interest among teenagers in studying vocational training at the expense of the baccalaureate, or at least in light of the stagnation of attraction to these studies, has been revealed again with the publication, this Thursday, of the latest official academic results, namely the net graduation rate, which reflects the percentage of people who reach the age of 18 – the age at which they should theoretically finish the baccalaureate and the intermediate vocational training degree if they do not repeat any course – who have completed their studies. This rate moved inversely in both teachings. In vocational training, it increased by one point, while in baccalaureate training, it decreased by three-tenths. If instead of observing the annual development (which is usually small in statistics) we look at what has happened in the past five years, the difference becomes clearer: the baccalaureate degree lost 1.1 percentage points, leaving its rate at 55% for 18-year-olds, while in intermediate vocational training it rose 4.6 points to 26.4%.
In absolute numbers, the number of baccalaureate graduates between the 2018-2019 and 2023-2024 academic years increased by 33,400, bringing the total to 288,197. The number of graduates of the intermediate stages of the Foundation Program increased by 38,429, bringing the total to 142,163.
The jump in the net graduation rate is more pronounced in the case of higher vocational training. The percentage of young people aged between 20 years (the theoretical age for completing these studies) who graduated increased by 7.1% over five years, representing more than a third of the total, specifically 34.1%. The number of graduates of higher vocational training increased by 58,698 over five years to reach 189,279.
The level of dropout from intermediate vocational training is still very high, around 30%, which constitutes one of the major challenges faced by the Spanish educational system. However, the fact that the net graduation rate is increasing reflects, at the same time, that the teachings are increasingly attracting students with multiple educational paths. This means that increasingly, especially in some branches, they are also chosen by students with good academic results at ESO. This is evidenced by the high admission scores for vocational training courses in many institutes, which require average grades above 7 in intermediate courses in fields such as healthcare or computer science.
The academic results also reflect that although the educational reform has had a clear result in reducing grade repeats, which have reached historically low levels (except for the most difficult course of the pandemic, when exceptional assessment criteria were approved), by 6.8% in ESO, 4.9% in baccalaureate, and 1.4% in primary schools, its impact on qualification levels is currently moderate. The overall graduation rate — which is calculated by taking the total number of those who finish ESO, regardless of their age, compared to the total number of people of the theoretical age to finish their studies (in this case, 16) — rose in the 2023-2024 academic year by five-tenths, to 82.1%.