There are some significant differences in the way the Spanish education system works compared to other EU Members States’ education systems. In general, such differences relate more to adequate academic re­sults and to the fact that the system is not sufficiently inclusive than to access to education.

In the challenge relating to quality education, two key indicators have been selected: one that measures the percentage of people who do not attain a high educa­tional level and another that measures the percentage of people who give up studying after compulsory ed­ucation (early school leaving). The first measures the percentage of people aged 25 to 64 who have not grad­uated in university or equivalent studies, and the sec­ond measures the percentage of people aged 18 to 24 who, regardless of whether they have finished low­er compulsory secondary education, do not continue their studies. In the first indicator, Spain is above the European mean. In 2017, the Spanish education sys­tem managed to ensure that 35% population reached a high educational level, whereas the European mean was 31%. In the second indicator, Spain is lagging be­hind other European countries, with 18.3% of people leaving the education system early, which is nearly double the European mean (10.6%).

The indicators selected for the challenge of having the possibility to gain adequate knowledge that con-tributes to society’s development were mathematics competencies in secondary education and adults’ for­eign language knowledge. In the first indicator, Spain is currently situated above the European mean, and it has gone up in the ranking in recent years from po­sition 20 to 15. In the second indicator, 10% more of the population in Spain does not attain sufficient for­eign language competencies compared to the Europe­an mean, and it falls within the group of countries with the worst results in foreign languages (United King­dom, Romania, Hungary and Bulgaria).

The analysis is completed by analysing the need to have an education system that is inclusive and does not segregate by social background. For that purpose, two relevant indicators have been selected: intergen­erational persistence of a low educational level and school segregation by socioeconomic level. The first indicator measures the percentage of people aged 25 to 64 whose parents have a low level of studies that did not attain a higher level than their parents. Spain is sit­uated well above the European mean, which reveals that the persistence of a low educational level is high compared to other European countries Only 1 in 2 peo­ple whose parents have a low educational level man­age to attain a higher educational level than their parents, whereas 2 in 3 do so in the European mean. This result may be linked to the late generalisation of intermediate and higher studies in Spain, which can still be detected among the population aged 25 to 64. The concern is the percentage of people aged 25 to 34 with a low educational level whose parents also have a low educational level has increased in the last decade. The fact that the trend in the latter indicator is growing is a warning sign.

A recent study by Murillo and Martínez-Garrido (2018) concludes that Spain is one of the countries with the highest level of school segregation by socioeconomic level at the age of 15, with figures close to those in sev­eral eastern European countries and far from the lev­els of segregation in Eurozone countries. Our results, using the same sources of information as the afore­mentioned authors, confirm those conclusions. Spain is lagging behind other EU countries in terms of school segregation by socioeconomic level at 10% more than the European country mean in 2015. Whereas 1 in 4 students should change educational es­tablishment so that there is no segregation, only 1 in 5 should do so in the European country mean. In 2015, Finland topped the ranking with the lowest level of segregation in the EU (17%) while Spain – with a level of segregation higher than 23% – joined Hungary, Bul­garia and Romania at the bottom of the country rank­ing in this need.

Within the context of a high level of segregation, it is interesting to analyse whether the main driver of seg­regation in Spain is the greater segregation of groups with higher or lower socioeconomic levels. In the figure, we can see that total segregation in Spain is most­ly explained by the fact that students from high and low socioeconomic backgrounds are more concen­trated in certain educational establishments than they are in the population, and that the most segregated of the two groups is the one comprising students from a high socioeconomic background. Taking into account the results for that group, Spain is actually the second most segregated in Europe after Hungary. However, when considering the level of segregation of the group from a low socioeconomic background, Spain is simi­lar to France and is less segregated than Belgium.