Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic – The country’s Ministry of Education has announced encouraging progress in secondary education retention, with the national dropout rate falling from 6.3% during the 2020–2021 academic year to 5.7% in the 2024–2025 school cycle. Education authorities attribute this gradual improvement to a suite of coordinated student retention policies and expanded systemic support designed to keep learners enrolled through the full academic year.
Officials confirm the downward trend in dropouts directly stems from targeted interventions that address the root causes of early school leaving, all aligned with a national education strategic roadmap focused on bolstering continuous enrollment and academic progress. Education Minister Luis Miguel De Camps emphasized that strengthening student retention remains a non-negotiable core pillar of the current administration’s education policy. The ministry has centered its efforts on three key priorities: expanding access to secondary education, lifting overall learning quality, and expanding wrap-around support for learners at every stage of their academic careers.
Beyond the falling dropout rate, the ministry also highlighted a concurrent improvement in secondary school promotion rates, signaling that more learners are advancing to the next grade without unnecessary delays or interruptions to their education. This overall trend, according to education officials, points to growing internal efficiency within the country’s secondary education system and the creation of more stable, accessible learning pathways for diverse groups of students.
To sustain these gains and expand retention efforts, the Dominican government has scaled up access to technical-professional education and arts education programs, building clear connections between secondary schooling and future employment opportunities for graduates. Additional targeted initiatives include the “Secondary Advances” program, which centers on improving both quality and equity across all secondary education institutions, and the national “I Choose to Learn” public awareness campaign, which encourages out-of-school young people and adults to re-enroll and complete their secondary studies.