Detailed project - Education saves the nation!

The effects of early school leaving are manifold, with a major negative impact in the medium and long term on the social, economic and cultural life of the affected areas.

Early school leaving is, in fact, a huge missed potential. This translates into social costs (social disruption, higher demand on the health system and lower social cohesion) and economic costs (lower productivity, lower tax revenues and increased social spending).

The main effects of school drop-out are:

• reduced chances of earning in the labour market and of being integrated into the labour force;
• the increase in expenditure that the state has to make because it is obliged to carry out and finance social programmes.
• increased juvenile delinquency, with people outside the education system being more likely to be involved in law-breaking, violence and membership of criminal groups;
• early school leavers directly affect the economy in the medium and long term because they will end up consuming more than they contribute to the state budget;
• increasing social inequality;
• the decline in economic development;
• Negative impact on human capital through negative influence on social, economic and political processes in terms of development projection.

Moreover, early school leaving is a profound systemic problem, because it is a factor with direct implications in accentuating later social exclusion. Studies suggest that in the future only 1 in 10 jobs will be available for an early school leaver.

The number of students in Botosani County who drop out of school is constantly increasing from one year to the next. According to statistics, at the end of the first semester of the 2021 - 2022 school year, 453 students were at risk of dropping out, compared to 442 in the previous school year.

Studies show that there is a clear and strong link between early school leaving and unemployment rates.

In Botoșani county, the situation confirms the connections between lack of education and unemployment, thus, according to data from AJOFM Botoșani, the people from Botoșani who have the greatest difficulties in finding a job are those without education or who have only completed primary education, i.e. 4 grades. Consequently, they represent the largest share in the total number of unemployed registered in the records of AJOFM, i.e. 32,37%. The next highest number of unemployed people are those with secondary education, with a share of 27.07% of the total unemployed. The list is completed by the unemployed with a secondary education (20.24%), those with vocational education (15.49%), those with higher education (3.50%), and those with post-secondary education (1.32%).

In practice, early school leaving has enormous financial implications, generating major social and economic costs for both individuals and society in Romania, the total cost of early school leaving being equivalent to 0.9% of GDP according to Brunello (2013).

According to European Union statistics, Romania is in the high alert zone, more precisely in the segment with a drop-out rate between 15.2 and 22.1% - a direct result of general social underdevelopment, especially in the rural sector, but also of chaotic educational policies.

Official figures provided by the NSI reveal that more than 6% of primary and secondary school age children are out of education and 17.5% of 18-24 year olds left school before finishing high school (early school leavers). Moreover, only 21.8% of 30-34 year olds in Romania have tertiary education, compared to the EU average of 34.6%.

In our country, the early school leaving rate is 16.4% (far from the target set for Romania for 2020, which is 11.3%), compared to 10.6% at EU level. The situation is much worse for rural education, with particularly large gaps between urban and rural areas: while the early school leaving rate is 17.4% in small towns and suburbs and falls to 6.2% in municipalities, it reaches 26.6% in rural areas.

One of the main reasons why so many rural children drop out of school after completing eight grades is the lack of school infrastructure: there are not enough high schools in rural areas. For this reason, children who want to continue their education after completing the 8th grade have to make an extra effort to go to a secondary school.

In rural areas, there has been no investment in school infrastructure since compulsory education was limited to eight classes. The proportion of pupils coming from rural areas is quite significant: in 2020, of the 172,531 pupils registered for the National Assessment, 59% were from urban areas and 41% from rural areas.

Unfortunately, if we look at the school infrastructure, we find that there are five times fewer high schools in rural areas than in urban areas (262 vs. 1297). In these conditions, without providing accessible public transport for all students, education costs become too high, especially for families in marginalised communities, which increases the risk of dropping out of school among rural students.

In 2015, Romania had a strategy approved by the Government on this area, the Strategy for Reducing Early School Leaving in Romania.

"Dropout rates only partially explain the phenomenon of PTS, but they give an alarming picture: in real figures, around 12,000 primary school pupils and over 28,000 lower secondary school pupils drop out of the system every year. In fact, if we look at a single age group, only 84% of students enrolled in grade 1 in 2004 are still in school at the end of grade 8," the document adopted by the Executive in 2015 showed.

More and more empirical studies have demonstrated a strong correlation between education and various indicators related to the economy, health and social capital (Grossman, 2006). A better understanding of the multiple social and economic benefits of education would be an important starting point in identifying real solutions to the problems we face.

According to data from the Household Labour Force Survey (AMIGO 2013), the wage earnings revealed by the ratio of employees with higher education to those with secondary education are higher than those revealed by the ratio of employees with secondary education to those with below-medium education.

According to the Deloitte study "Cost of education: investment, return, impact" for World Vision Romania:

Secondary education (ISCED 2 3) leads to an improvement in the return on investment in education generated by reduced state expenditure on support after completion of education and increased income) by 22% for farmers, 51% for the unemployed and over 86% for the self-employed in non-agricultural activities, while for employees it leads to an increase in state income by ~93%.

Completion of tertiary education (ISCED 5 7) results in an increase of ~86% for the employee compared to the earnings of the employee with secondary education.

Looking at the extremes, the difference between an unemployed person with primary education (ISCED 0 1) and an employee with higher education (ISCED 5 7) is about RON 1.36 million for the state. The state costs around RON 90 thousand in lifetime support for an unemployed person with primary education, while an employee with higher education contributes more than RON 1.27 million in taxes and charges.

Access to a higher level of education leads, with the increase in income, to a decrease in

percentage of consumption expenditure and an increase in expenditure on taxes, contributions, levies and duties in total expenditure.

Support given to a person after completing education by the state through social benefits,

varies depending on the person's occupational status, from ~170 RON per year for self-employed workers

own non-agricultural activities to ~1,200 RON per year for the unemployed in 2020.

Studies show that for Romania, a two percentage point increase in investment in education would generate between €12 and €17 billion in economic growth over the next ten years.

If Romania manages to reach the OECD average of 500 points in the PISA tests, this would mean a contribution of an additional 0.95% to the growth of the economy.

Analyses based on national data estimate that the economic benefit of an extra year of schooling would amount to almost 8%, which is 2 percent more than the projected level of investment in education (6% of GDP).

Attracting as many children as possible to school and improving the education system, with a focus on compulsory education, should be a priority of all strategies aimed at reducing disparities and developing human capital in Botosani County.

This can be achieved through the provision of prevention, intervention and compensatory education programmes, such as: school programmes adapted to the needs of children at risk of dropping out, after-school activities, school after school, second chance, etc.

The overall conclusion is that the average person with a higher level of education can access an occupational status that can lead to a higher income, an income that can ensure a higher standard of living and comfort by having access to a wider range of products and services.

Thus, the costs incurred by the state for a person's education can be seen as an investment by the state in that person - the return on this investment being determined by the amount of money paid by the person in the form of taxes, contributions, levies and fees, but also by the financial independence from state support schemes.

What do we want?

Education reduces poverty, eliminates inequality and contributes to economic development. Higher levels of education therefore have both direct individual and indirect collective benefits.

Taking into account the above-mentioned aspects, by implementing the project "Education saves the nation", we want to establish the directions of action to prevent the phenomenon of early school leaving by financially supporting 300 students (by paying the differences with the transport expenses for the current year of study) from Botosani county, as well as increasing the students' school performance and developing essential skills for a future profession.

In the context of the increasing phenomenon of early school leaving, the project of our association aims at systemic interventions to prevent this phenomenon, on three levels, as follows:

                1. Creation & development of mechanisms for monitoring, warning, preventing and combating school dropout & early school leaving for 300 children from rural areas (Botoșani county); identification of the target group and establishment of the amounts needed to cover the transport costs for pupils in this group during the current school year.

 2. Information, counselling and parental education programmes for parents of pre-university children, with a focus on those from vulnerable groups.

3. Increase the accessibility, attractiveness and quality of vocational and technical education. The link with labour market dynamics is a priority for vocational and technical education in order to provide the labour force needed in the economic environment in real time. In this respect, the measures aim at encouraging partnerships with economic operators, ensuring the quality of students' practical training programmes, ensuring the standards of equipping "school workshops" with teaching aids and equipment both at the level of vocational education establishments and at the level of economic operators, in line with the skills needs required by the labour market.

We believe that we owe it to ourselves, as members of the same community, to be actively involved in the process of social and economic development of society, and education is a vitally important pillar in this process.

The implementation of this project implies the recovery of a natural and necessary societal balance by making the most of the human potential existing in Botoșani County.

By supporting students at risk of dropping out of school, the community of Botoșan will contribute to building a future in which the educational level of young people in Botoșan will allow our county to emerge from the demographic, economic and social crisis in which we have been plunging for 30 years.

An educated child = an earned future!