The scale of early school leaving has been made clear by the 2017 monitoring of education and training in Bulgaria. The total share of dropouts from school across the country is 13.8 percent, with the trend being considerably weaker in big cities at just 2.8 percent. The large number of early school leavers is explained with social and economic factors, learning difficulties, and increasingly with emigration. To try to revert the trend, mobile teams have been formed this year that should identify pupils subject to early school leaving risk. A discussion is underway to bind strictly social benefits to visiting school regularly. The monitoring has confirmed the conclusion of the international PISA 2015survey, notably, that in all three surveyed subjects (reading, mathematics and natural sciences) the share of students with low scores in Bulgaria remains one of the largest across the European Union.