The proportion of Maltese 25-34 year-olds with a tertiary level of education has jumped from 26 per cent to 40 per cent in the last 10 years, one of the biggest rises in the EU.

That leaves Malta just five percentage points away from achieving the EU’s target of 45 per cent by 2030.

The new figures, published by Eurostat, provide some welcome news from the education sector after data two months ago showed Malta still has the second-highest rate of early school leavers in the bloc, at nearly 17 per cent.   

In Malta in 2020, there were 14 per cent more people aged 25-34 educated to a university level or equivalent than in 2011.

Luxembourg and Portugal saw a similar rise over the same period, with only Austria registering a bigger increase at 20 per cent.

The average increase in EU countries was just over seven per cent.

Malta is still ninth from the bottom in the EU but the country has moved up two places.

The upward trend took place in one to three percentage point increments up until 2017, when there was a significant increase of five percentage points to reach 40 per cent. The figure has remained stagnant since.

The gender gap in Malta has widened: by 2020, nearly nine per cent more women than men had tertiary level qualifications, up from a difference of 2.4 per cent in 2011.

At 60 per cent, Luxembourg has the highest proportion of qualified 25-34 year-olds among member states, while Romania and Italy have the lowest at 25 per cent and 29 per cent respectively.

Across the EU in 2020, four in 10 people in that age group had completed tertiary education, with a larger share of women (46 per cent) than men (35 per cent).

The EU gender gap has also increased to nearly 11 per cent from just over nine per cent in 2011.