Country pillars
The ESI measures countries’ “distance to the ideal” performance. This ideal performance is chosen as the highest achieved by any country over a period of 7 years. The ideal performance is scaled to be 100 and the scores of all countries are then computed and compared to that. Basis of the ESI are 15 individual indicators from various international datasets. The scores are calculated across countries at the indicators’ level. The scores are then averaged at the various layers and finally the Index score is formed. To illustrate, an Index (or pillar, sub-pillar etc.) score of 65 suggests that the country has reached 65% of the ideal performance. Thus, there is still 35% (100-65) room for improvement. A score of 100 corresponds to achieving the ‘frontier’, that is an aspirational target performance for that indicator. A score of 0 corresponds to a lowest-case performance. This page shows specific information on the scores achieved by the chosen country across pillars, sub-pillars and indicators. Below, you can find a short commentary on country’s skills system performance over time and the ESI 2024 scores.
Slovakia: 2024 scores and progress over time
Slovakia ranked 19th of 31 countries in the European Skills Index in 2024, with a total score of 55.4. At the pillar level, it ranked 14th in Skills Development (score: 56.3), 26th in Skills Activation (score: 43.4) and 12th in Skills Matching (score: 63.9).
The highest-ranking indicators of Slovakia, in comparison with other countries, are Qualification mismatch (21%, rank 2nd) and Upper secondary attainment (and above) (87.2%, rank 3rd). On the other hand, its weakest indicators are Long-term unemployment (4.1%, rank 27th) and Early leavers from training (6.3%, rank 26th).
Over the last seven years the overall rank of Slovakia has decreased from 16th place in 2017, a drop of 3 places. In that time, its overall score has increased from 50.4 to 55.4. The indicators that have improved the most (in terms of their normalised scores, and accounting for indicator directions) are Recent training (3.1% in 2017 to 12.8% in 2024), and Recent graduates in employment (75.2% in 2017 to 83.9% in 2024). The indicators that have shown the greatest declines are Low-wage workers (ISCED 5-8) (1.6% in 2017 to 4.4% in 2024), and Early leavers from training (5.3% in 2017 to 6.3% in 2024).
Note that these figures may refer to imputed data points.