Drop outs : around 70 percent of them are male!

The diagrams below illustrate both the percentage of school drop-outs and grade retention differentiate by gender, male and female, from primary school to secondary school at 2016/2017 in Indonesia. The diagrams are from the central statistics of the Indonesian Ministry of  Education and Culture. As we can see in the graphs, generally male has higher percentages of drop-outs and class repetition in all school level compared to female. 

Drop-outs percentage by gender in 2016/2017 

Grade Retention by gender in 2016/2017

One of the first things to note is that male has a bigger drop-out percentage than female. For instance, in junior high school level around 62,97 percent of all school drop-outs are male. Even at the special needs school, the percentage of male dropouts are noticeably higher around 61,65 percent. However, in the elementary level even though male still has a bigger percentage of drop-outs but, the gap between the gender isn't too high, 58 percent for male and 41 percent for female. 

Another thing to point out is that male has a significantly higher percentage to repeat a grade than women at all level. For example, in vocational school around 83,56 percent of people who repeat a grade are male while only 16 percent of them are female. Similarly, in junior high school and also senior high school from all the people who need to repeat the class around 76 percent of them are male. Yet, at the elementary level as well as special needs school, even though male still has a higher percentage of class repetition but the gaps aren't that enormous compared to the other level only around 64 percent. 

The result of the diagram somehow contrasts the old Indonesian norm in which male education is prioritized to the extent that women are better staying at home. If somehow, we still have that tradition, I'd like to think that the result would be different. However what we are experiencing at the moment is that more and more male drop-outs from school which raised the question "why?" the percentage above showing the dramatic differences between the gender. Is it somehow because of women movement? or maybe biological factor between man or women? However, this issue needs to be addressed and solved quickly before more and more male choose to stop coming to the school.