The number of elementary, middle and high school dropouts has increased drastically over the past three years.

The Education Ministry’s data presented to ruling Saenuri Party Representative Min Byung-joo shows that about 63-thousand-500 elementary, middle and high school students nationwide discontinued their studies and left school last year.

The figure shows some 16-hundred more students left school, compared to 2009, and 29-hundred more since 2010.

The ministry's data shows that ten-thousand-770 elementary school students and 15-thousand-340 middle school students dropped out last year. Roughly 37-thousand-400 high school students left school.

More than half of the students cited a failure to adapt to school as the reason for leaving.