Is the distribution of NEETs and early leavers from education and training converging across the regions of the European Union?

Literature on education and training highlights two factors that impinge on the distribution of early leaving (ELET) and exclusion from employment and training (NEET) across EU regions. One of these factors lies in the institutions that regulate the transition from education and training to employment at the national level. Over time, these institutions have constituted a Universalistic regime in Scandinavia, an Employment-Centred regime in Central Europe, a Liberal Regime in the UK and Ireland, a Sub-Protective regime in Southern Western Europe and an array of Post-Socialist regimes. The other factor lies at the local and regional levels of governance. In some regions, diverse stakeholders are capable to encourage early school leavers to undertake education and training again, and have constructed complex schemes of vocational education and training that embrace apprenticeships, secondary and tertiary education. By exploring the regional distribution of ELET and NEET rates between 2003 and 2015, our findings report mixed trends of convergence. While in Universalistic and Employment-Centred regimes we find out convergence insofar as the more vulnerable regions catch up, in Liberal, Sub- Protective and Post- Socialist regimes catch-up effects are weak and not significant, and top performing regions deviate from the rest.