After continual growth in recent years, overall participation in upper secondary schooling is actually slightly down in Veneto: of young people aged 14 to 18 years old, 88.5% registered for a secondary school in the 2008/09 school year, one percentage point less than the previous year and lower than the Italian average of 92.5%.
The share of students making it through from their first year to getting a diploma stands at 72.5% in Veneto and at 67.9% in Italy; it must be pointed out though, that even if the situation in Veneto is better than in Italy overall it is still cause for concern as more than one student in four in Veneto gets lost somewhere along the way during their upper secondary school career. Overall, according to data on dropout rates, figures are better for the lyceums than for the technical and professional schools or for the regional professional training courses. This means questions need to be asked about whether there is a correlation between the family's social status and the type of school chosen and then about whether there is a possible link between a student's background and their access to equal educational opportunities.
The average cognitive learning level of fifteen-year-old school-goers in Veneto is significantly higher than the national average. On the other hand, both levels of bullying and of school-induced stress amongst fifteen-year-olds are quite worrying; pupils of this age-group are also bigger smokers than in Italy overall as the figures for number of students who smoke daily are more than four points higher than the national average.
For the 2007/08 academic year, 62% of students who finished high school the previous year then went on to attend university; this is four percentage points lower than the national average. A total of 18.5% of first-year university students in Veneto are from another region and the percentage of Veneto students heading off to study in another region has risen to 25%.
(Chapter 4 in figures)