Educational Poverty

In the 2015 Education and Training Monitor, the European Commission decided to use the term “Educational Poverty” to describe very low educational achievement – “the share of young people failing to reach minimum standards in education”; this can be related to early school leaving, low education attainment and low educational achievement. The reference cited in the Monitor was the Commission publication “An ever closer union among the peoples of Europe? Rising inequalities in the EU and their social, economic and political impacts. Outcomes of EU–funded research” (2015), which explicitly uses the term “educational poverty”. While the term “educational poverty” has triggered the desired discussion and raised awareness for these critical indicators, there is a need for more thorough information about the term as such. Therefore, this report provides a brief summary of the history of the term “educational poverty” and its geographical use.