The Ministry of Education of the Dominican Republic (minerd) reported this Tuesday a school dropout greater than 20% in various regions of the country, data corresponding to the 2023-2024 school period.
Manaury Valerio, director of Information, Analysis and Strategic Studies of the entity, presented the educational statistics for the period 2023-2024, highlighting public access to this data through the Ministry’s portal. During an event at the Salomé Ureña Teacher Training Institute (Isfodosu), Valerio stressed the commitment of the minerd with institutional transparency.
Among the data presented, he reported that the school dropout in it primary level, remaining this year at only 2%, compared to three previous years, which was recorded at 4.1%, however, “in the case of secondary school we still present significant challenges to continue reducing dropouts, but we already have less than 5% % student dropout”.
He argued that, in primary levelhe Ministry of Education has documented the main factors of school dropoutwhich have to do with the “commitment of families that young people in the age ranges between six to 11 years old can fulfill their commitment at school, unless it is a moving or health issue” .
He considered that in the primary levelunlike the secondary one, there are no dropout factors directly linked to the student, as occurs in the secondary level, where the most frequent dropout issues continue to be the cases of teenage pregnancies, “which is one of the issues in which the Ministry has paid a lot of attention to reduce dropout, as well as the cases of early labor insertion age, in the case of males, who drop out of school to focus on earning a higher income.
However, he assured that to address this problem, the minerd has implemented a awareness program with family and communities so that these factors do not continue to affect the student education.
It was also announced that during the 2023-2024 school period, 2,617,801 students were enrolled; 383,400, in the initial level; 1,165,388, in the primary level; 863,765, in the secondary leveland 205,248, in the adult subsystem. Likewise, 15,755 students with disabilities were registered at all levels and modalities. In the public sector, 2,031,077 were enrolled, which represents 77.6% of the total number of students.
The provinces with the highest desertion are not the border ones
According to the statistics of the Thematic Map of Internal Efficiency Indicators 2023 to 2024 of the minerdthe provinces with the highest desertions are not the border ones.
For example, the two provinces with the highest school dropouts are Valverde, while those with the least dropouts are Monte Cristi and Elías Piña.
Valverde, out of an enrollment of 2,506, 1,116 students dropped out, with 44.53%. In the Duarte province, of 3,829, 1,662 abandoned, with a percentage of 43.40%. In Sánchez Ramírez, of the 2,994, 1,162 deserted, with a percentage of 38.80%. The other provinces maintain percentages between 37.60 and 31.18%, with the exception of Dajabón, Montecristi and Elías Piña, with percentages of 30.71, 30.14 and 29.04, the latter two showing to be the provinces with the least school dropout.
Elías Piña and Monte Cristi are the two border provinces with the lowest school dropout. In Elías Piña, with an enrollment of 1,424, 414 dropped out; while in Monte Cristi, with 1,154, 348 deserted.
In Santo Domingo, with the highest enrollment of 41,347, 13,599 dropped out, for 32.89%; Meanwhile, the National District, with 14,310, had a dropout of 4,861, for a percentage of 33.97%.
Advances according to Minerd:
Amaury Valerio also announced the improvements of this year, indicating that in less than five months the available statisticscontrary to previous years which was one year and six months, which allows the educational community and the general public to have more timely information. “The goal is that as soon as the school year ends, by next month, we will have the statistics,” he said.
To access the statistics and indicators, interested parties can visit the web portal of the ministry and access the menu Statistics sectionwhere they can view dynamic information boards and generate their reports or download official publications in PDF format, according to the explanations offered.
