June 30, 2022.<sup>15</sup> As such, approximately three in each four Ukrainian refugee students in secondary school age were not enrolled in Italian schools in academic year 2021-22.

In the following years, enrollment rates have shown improvement despite still remaining low. As shown in Figure 1, in academic year 2022-2023 around 32% Ukrainian refugees were enrolled in Italian secondary schools,<sup>16</sup> with the percentage becoming 36% in academic year 2023-24.<sup>17</sup> These numbers remain low compared to the enrollment rates for other foreign students. According to the data from the MoE, the enrollment rate of students with non-Italian citizenship, except for preprimary schools, is close to that of Italians. In particular, in grades 1-8, the enrollment rate is close to 100 percent; in grades 9 to 11, it reaches almost 90 percent; on the other hand, in the last three years of secondary school, corresponding to the start of non-compulsory school years, the enrollment rate of students with non-Italian citizenship decreases to 78 percent compared to 83 percent for Italian students (MoE, 2023).<sup>18</sup> Analysis of MoE data covering academic years 2022-23 through 2023-24 highlights a substantial dropout trend from the Italian school system among displaced Ukrainian learners.<sup>19</sup> Only 58% of Ukrainian refugee students initially enrolled in Grades 6 to 12 during the 2022-23 academic year continued their education within the Italian system the subsequent year, suggesting a 42% drop-out rate.<sup>20</sup> Figure 2 shows that the dropout rate among Ukrainian refugees is more than twice as high as that of other foreigners and six times higher than that of Italian students. These numbers are in line with observations from previous academic years, when the dropout rate of foreigners was three times higher than that of Italians (30.1 percent vs. 9.8 percent) (ISTAT, 2023). No discernible gender or regional disparities are observed in these dropout rates.<sup>21</sup>

> 15 The number of Ukrainian refugees aged 11-18 who requested temporary protection as of June 30, 2022 was elaborated by ISTAT based on data from the Ministry of Interior.

16 This ratio is estimated by dividing the number of refugees enrolled in the Italian system in the academic year 2022-2023 (i.e., 8,012 students) by the number of Ukrainians aged 11-18 who requested temporary protection as of March 31, 2023 (i.e., 25,345 Ukrainian refugees, based on ISTAT elaborations on data from the Ministry of the Interior).

17 This ratio is estimated by dividing the number of refugees enrolled in grades 7 to 13 in the Italian system in the academic year 2023-2024 (i.e., 7,767 students) by the number of Ukrainians aged 12-18 who requested temporary protection as of January 2024 (i.e., 21,742 Ukrainian refugees, based on ISTAT elaborations on data from the Ministry of the Interior). The data on enrollment provided by the Ministry of Education do not cover Grade 6 for academic year 2023-24. Data from the Ministry of Interior on temporary protection does not capture the actual residence and, hence, does not allow to monitor whether bene�iciaries of temporary protection are still in Italy.

18 Data from the MoE does not include students enrolled in the vocational training centers (Centri per la formazione professionale), which are the responsibility of the regions or provinces and whose data on enrollment are therefore not systematically available. These courses are for students who have completed the lower secondary schools, they usually last three years and do not give access to university.

19 It is not possible to derive an accurate dropout rate from the academic year 2021-22 to the academic year 2022-23 since some of the few refugee students who enrolled in the Italian school system were provided with temporary “student IDs” when they arrived in 2021-2022, making them too dif�icult to track across those two academic years.

20 These numbers capture the dropout rate within the Italian school system only. Unfortunately, data does not allow to capture whether the students who dropped out moved and enrolled in school systems in other countries.

21 The dropout rates are 42% in the North, 40% in the Center, and 43% in the South macro-regions. The dropout rate is 42% for both males and females.

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