School until 18? What Luxembourg's new schooling obligation really requires

The question sounds almost provocative: do young people in Luxembourg really have to stay in school until they are eighteen? From the 2026 school year the short answer is yes — but the longer answer is more interesting, and the distinction between the two is where most of the confusion lies. A law adopted by the Chamber of Deputies in July 2023 raises the compulsory-schooling age, the obligation scolaire, from sixteen to eighteen. "Schooling" here is a broader category than a desk in a classroom, and what the obligation actually demands matters for thousands of teenagers and their parents.

What the law requires

The law of 20 July 2023, which emerged from bill 7977 with the Democratic Party's Gilles Baum as rapporteur, extends the duty to be in education from sixteen to eighteen. Until now, children in Luxembourg have been subject to compulsory schooling from four to sixteen — twelve consecutive years, among the longest spans in Europe. The reform adds two more years at the top end.

Crucially, the obligation is not satisfied only by sitting in a secondary classroom. According to the Ministry of Education, Children and Youth (MENEJE), it can be met through several recognised routes: continued schooling in a lycée; a vocational apprenticeship, which a young person can begin from the age of fifteen; or placement in one of the country's socio-professional insertion centres (CISP). A minor of at least sixteen who wishes to take up paid work may request a dispensation for the duration of their employment contract. In practice, then, Luxembourg is closer to a model in which young people must remain in education, training or a qualifying pathway until eighteen, rather than one that simply keeps every teenager in a school building for two extra years.

The new rules apply to young people who had not yet reached the age of fourteen on 1 September 2023 and who have their usual residence in the Grand Duchy. The first cohort therefore reaches the new ceiling as the law takes effect for the September 2026 rentrée. The lead time, the ministry has said, is meant to give schools and training providers time to build the "additional and alternative offers" the extra years require.

Why Luxembourg is doing this

The driving rationale is décrochage scolaire — early school leaving — and the young people it leaves stranded. Presenting the reform, Education Minister Claude Meisch framed it as a commitment by the state rather than a burden on pupils. "By increasing the duration of compulsory schooling for young people, we are also giving ourselves the obligation not to let young people down," he said, adding that many who drop out "do not reject school, but rather feel that school is rejecting them."

The numbers behind the policy are modest in absolute terms but stubborn. Luxembourg's school-leaving rate has fallen over two decades, to roughly 6.9 percent — about 1,457 pupils — in 2019/20. Yet in 2020/21 some 647 young people under the age of eighteen left the system, of whom close to 570 were classified as NEET — "not in education, employment or training" — a group with markedly weaker prospects. The reform's logic is that the years between sixteen and eighteen are precisely when at-risk teenagers slip away, and that a legal duty, paired with support, can catch them.

The role of the ALJ and the safety net

The obligation does not stand alone. Its companion is a long-standing tracking and reintegration apparatus, chief among it the Action locale pour jeunes (ALJ), run under MENEJE through regional offices with roughly seventy staff. Drawing on a national pupil register updated monthly, ALJ caseworkers identify young people who have left education and contact them directly to ask why they went and what they need. Their work spans prevention, monitoring and reintegration — discovery internships, guidance toward apprenticeships, and routes back into schooling or training. For pupils aged twelve to sixteen the CISP run a programme called "Relance"; for those sixteen to twenty-four, "Reconnect."

What changes for families — and how it is enforced

For most pupils on a conventional academic or vocational track, little changes: they were going to be in education at sixteen and seventeen anyway. The reform bites at the margins — the minority who would otherwise have left. For their families, the obligation now follows the young person to eighteen, and responsibility for monitoring compliance shifts from the municipalities (communes) to the state.

Enforcement is deliberately graduated and non-punitive. Persistent absence triggers a formal notice; if unresolved, the case may be referred to the juvenile court (the juge de la jeunesse). Notably, the law attaches no criminal penalties. The aim, officials stress, is to bring families and young people back toward a qualifying pathway, not to fine or prosecute them — a design choice that distinguishes the Luxembourg approach from more coercive models.

How Luxembourg compares with its neighbours

The Grand Duchy is following a well-worn European path rather than breaking new ground. The clearest parallel is the Netherlands, where schooling is compulsory to sixteen but young people aged sixteen to eighteen must obtain a basic qualification — a startkwalificatie — or keep studying until they have one. France moved in 2020 to make training compulsory between sixteen and eighteen, fulfillable through schooling, apprenticeship, civic service or social-integration measures. Belgium keeps education compulsory to eighteen outright, allowing part-time vocational study after the mid-teens, while in Germany full-time schooling typically ends around sixteen with part-time enrolment continuing to eighteen.

Seen against that backdrop, Luxembourg's reform is less a leap than a convergence: a duty to remain in education or training until eighteen, met flexibly and backed by tracking and support rather than sanction. Whether it meaningfully shrinks the NEET cohort will not be clear until well after the first eighteen-year-olds pass through it — but the wager, as Mr Meisch framed it, is that the state owes those young people the years, not the other way around.