Talk:School-leaving age

USA missing
Why isn't the USA on this list?
 * Same reason France isn't.. there wasn't any data available for these countries on the source used. If you know of a source where info the USA is, by all means add it in and reference is accordingly. Bungle44 11:56, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

does someone have some sort of agenda for the usa? in the image it is far darker than it should be. the leaving age for most americans is around 15 or 16 and perhaps 17 for some, but certainly not 18. working age is more complicated, any child can work for a family business, but 15 is probably the most common legal age. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.162.159.123 (talk) 19:49, 22 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I initially agreed with this, but was surprised to find out that the USA does range between 16 and 18, with a lot more than I expected requiring 17 or 18. See this page from 2002: Jonathansfox (talk) 12:10, 5 December 2008 (UTC)
 * I think that we should change the USA's age, or just put it varies by state, because according to the link you posted about 75% of states have a leaving ages under 18; more than half being at 16. Flffy&#39;d (talk) 20:18, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

United Kingdom
There appears to be a bug in the table programming for the section on "England": the difference between "16 or 18" and "14" is "1"? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.67.105.161 (talk) 12:49, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

After 2013 there will be age differences in the UK Nations. Scotland will be 16, Wales will remain at 16 and England will be 18. The Scottish parliament and the National Assembly for Wales have said they will not change the school leaving age to 18. Please try and note this on this article about the changes in the U.K. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.11.221.164 (talk) 13:49, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

also the current age of leaving in the UK is 16 not 17 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.129.15.161 (talk) 19:07, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

UK seems to be represented by England & Scotland, respectively, but no mention of Wales or Northern Ireland, each of which have their own laws in this regard, as far as I'm aware. Gwladys24 (talk) 16:09, 18 July 2010 (UTC)


 * Can someone please then create separate entries for all of the 4 devolved nations in the UK as there are 4 different laws. Perhaps a "UK" entry can point enquiries towards the fact that this is a devolved issue. FloreatAntiquaDomus 01:09, 18 February 2011 (UTC)


 * England, Scotland and Wales are all entered but Northern Ireland is still missing. Having checked the C.A.B. guidelines for Northern Ireland I am going to add it Captainbeecher (talk) 19:44, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

Good source
A good reference source for this is the United States' Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, it is publicly available in English on US State Department website. (direct link). Voidvector (talk) 16:45, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

Inconsistencies
There are inconsistencies between this page and the page on the raising of the school leaving age (e.g. Germany - 16 or 18?) References should be provided for all the ages listed here on this page. Scleaver (talk) 00:11, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Peru
What about the references about school leaving age in Peru? I'm peruvian, and, officially, people leave school at 16 years old, because they start school at 6 years old, and 10 years later, with 11 grades, they finish school. I'm correcting the information in the article's page, but if someone can, please modify the image. --Enkiduk (talk) 06:04, 12 July 2008 (UTC)
 * If you can get a reference for it to replace the current one that'd be great. The reference used at current is dated back quite some years ago, so it's very likely to have changed since then, which if it has, amendment would be worthwhile. Bungle (talk • contribs) 10:00, 12 July 2008 (UTC)
 * ✅ thanks, if anything else on the map needs changing please let me know. If the image doesn't appear to have changed press Ctrl + F5. bsrboy (talk) 10:51, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

New map
from bsrboy's talk page,

More of a request really, as I see you have taken an interest in developing and maintaining the map used in the school leaving age article. Just wondering what your thoughts are on creating an additional map to show the school leaving age/employment age synchronisation (using the existing colours) to compliment the existing map? I plan on doing some work on getting references and tidying it up relatively soon, but I would imagine most of those figures are reasonably accurate. Do you think that would be worthwhile? Bungle (talk • contribs) 11:42, 20 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I can make a map using the colours of synchronisation. Just let me know when you want it to done. I can do it now or whenever you want, because you might want to spend some time clearing up references first. bsrboy (talk) 11:46, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

The accuracy of the minimum employment ages listed is a major concern
There is a note at the top of the article that full and part time minimum employment ages may vary, but this is not reflected in the table. Thus the numbers given may create a very misleading impression. I have corrected the UK numbers, but I suspect that most countries, certainly most developed countries, have different minimum ages for full and part time employment. I know for sure that Australia does, but I don't know enough to correct Australia's entry with confidence. In some countries the rules vary between different sub-national entities. I really doubt that it is viable to provide accurate information in this article, which is after all about school leaving ages, not employment ages, so perhaps it should be removed altogether. The simplistic subtraction of school leaving age from employment age seems to me to be fundamentally flawed. I would suggest that a separate article should be created called minimum employment age, with tables designed to accommodate full / part-time and sub-national variations. Mowsbury (talk) 13:11, 23 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I share your concern. What I propose is to place brackets around ages at which part-time employment is legal: e.g. (13) and also the subtracted number (-3). This will highlight the difference, though it would prevent these tables being sorted which they currently aren't. Chris55 (talk) 13:12, 2 January 2014 (UTC)
 * I see the SLA template makes the (-3) more difficult, so I'll leave that. I'm not sure whether to extend this notation to Germany and other countries which practice a dual education system. Anybody want to do it? Chris55 (talk) 13:28, 2 January 2014 (UTC)

New Discussion
A discussion has been started at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Countries/Lists of countries which could affect the inclusion criteria and title of this and other lists of countries. Editors are invited to participate. Pfainuk talk 12:25, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Israel
In Israel a pupil can drop out after the tenth grade, that would be at age 16-16.5, even though passing the twelfth year is the norm. TFighterPilot (talk) 08:43, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

inaccuracy of the image.
i put this here to get more exposure. the map image in this article seems horribly inaccurate. any votes in favor of removing it from the article?· Lygophile   has   spoken  03:09, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

Oceanic regions
This article totally leaves out the oceanic region, such as Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific Islands. Although in the image it shows the leaving ages in colour. Where is this data from? Why isn't it tabulated? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.171.235.63 (talk) 00:03, 26 March 2012 (UTC)


 * Some vandal deleted the table on Oceania back in December 2010(!) and it appears no-one noticed until you did. I've restored it now. So, thanks! - htonl (talk) 00:24, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

Cuba
Why is Cuba not included? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Belloway (talk • contribs) 20:16, 26 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Probably there is no information available about the school-leaving age in Cuba. "Right to Education", which is the source for most of this article, doesn't give an age on their Cuba page. - htonl (talk) 21:23, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

Giving citations
I've added a date field to the template used for this article as there's no way the entries can be improved unless we know when the figures relate to. In checking the figures against the main source for the page - the Right to Education Project - a number of these don't tally. Where it seems that the figures might be more up to date than this, instead of querying the numbers (which stops the template working properly) I've put a ? after the date. But it would be helpful if people could use footnotes rather than writing long essays in the box, and please add citations. Chris55 (talk) 23:40, 2 January 2014 (UTC)

discrepancy between map and text
The map shows the US as having a school-leaving age of 18, but the text says 16.--76.169.116.244 (talk) 06:58, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

Germany Age 18
This can't be true. After fours years of primary school, there are three types of middle schools depending on how good you were in primary school: Hauptschule (5 years), Realschule (6 years), Gymnasium (8-9 years). Assuming a child begins his education at age 6, you would be done with Hauptschule by age 15. After this, you are not required to go to any other school, you won't be accepted at college with a Hauptschule degree. These people go working earlier. --2.246.16.205 (talk) 06:45, 31 December 2014 (UTC)
 * You're right, and at the same time you're wrong. Let me explain. Germany has two levels of school education. 1) Primary Education. This begins at the age of 6 and ends, just as you wrote, at the age of 15. Pupils might leave Hauptschule after successfully completing the 9th grade. But then the law for all schools kicks in and demands the second level. 2) Secondary Education. This level is completed by either apprenticeship for a job, which usually lasts 3 years and results in an age of 18. Or by entering the higher education level at school (the so-called "Gymnasium", or "Lycee" in French) and completing the grades 10 to 12, which ends in the "Abitur" (Graduation). This is also usually done at the age of 18. So, a pupil might leave school at 15, but still falls under the law which demands a full education (completing Primary and Secondary Level), either through job (apprenticeship from 15 to 18) or by completing all 12 grades of school.
 * There are exceptions, though. Some jobs have a learning time of only 2 years. A boy or a girl who chooses such a job can complete school already at the age of 17 and has no further obligation to get governmental education. Some pupils skip classes due to high intelligence and might graduate after 12th grade at the age of 17, 16, 15 14 or even 13 years (google for "Abitur mit 13", if you don't believe this^^). In these cases, the young teens are also free from further visiting school, because they have completed the mandatory Primary and Secondary Level of education. All in all, the leaving age for german schools is by law 18, but this can be done in two ways: school from age 6 to 18 and graduation, or school from age 6 to 15 and then an apprenticeship. Earlier completion of these two ways is also possible, as explained. Hope this clears the things a bit :) --178.8.239.33 (talk) 08:38, 16 August 2018 (UTC)

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Argentina
I corrected the employment age for Argentina which is currently 16, not 14. The link is for the law (26.390) that increased it back in 2008. This is my first time editing anything so feel free to cite the reference properly if I did it wrong. Thank you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 181.28.219.64 (talk) 22:18, 20 September 2019 (UTC)

Punctuation in tables
Are you objecting to the change of the dash or the slash? I see added the HTML entity for Costa Rica recently, but it's unclear what calculation this is meant to fix. It's also unclear why there are two values for this country, and it looks like Canada is using an ASCII slash. -- Beland (talk) 16:10, 23 June 2021 (UTC)
 * The slash. Similarly, I also don't know why there are 2 values for the country either. This should probably be the focus of correction than re-inserting the slash which causes other issues. Ideally, there should be a single figure per country. I see you did this as part of a job-lot of editing so I didn't feel it was necessary to query it with you directly, as you probably hadn't observed why it was added. Bungle (talk • contribs) 18:11, 23 June 2021 (UTC)


 * What is the issue the slash causes? --  Beland (talk) 18:16, 23 June 2021 (UTC)
 * With the slash, 17/18 is treated as a fraction (0.944), and the age gap becomes incorrectly calculated as 17/18–15=14.056. With the character code, 17/18 is treated as text so no calculation is done. For Canada, there is already more text in the cell so even with the slash there is no calculation. Heitordp (talk) 05:57, 24 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Ah, thanks for the clarification; I hadn't noticed that the age gap column is calculated. We generally try to avoid slashes because the meaning is unclear. I changed Costa Rica and Canada to use "or" instead. If it's actually a range between those values, a dash would be preferred. Putting a single number per country would be incorrect where the age varies by jurisdiction; having multiple values makes the "Age gap" box turn white, which the legend says indicates that variance. Though we could change the table to indicate the lowest or highest employment or school-leaving age permitted in any jurisdiction in a country, and indicate the variance only in an English note. -- Beland (talk) 17:01, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

Turkey missing in Europe!
You forgot Turkey! Can they add it? 213.233.110.213 (talk) 09:04, 9 February 2024 (UTC)