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In December 2024 there were 7,069 staff members working in pre-primary schools in Iceland, an increase of 106 from the previous year. Of those, 1,504 were educated as pre-primary teachers and 307 as other licenced teachers. There were over 20,200 children attending pre-primary schools in Iceland in December 2024.
Most students graduating with a matriculation examination in 2025 graduated from a line of study programmes classified as “other”, i.e. unspecified or open study tracks. This is the first year in nearly a decade, since 2016, that the natural sciences line of study was not the largest among graduating students.
The enrolment rate at the tertiary level decreased slightly between 2024 and 2025 according to Statistics Iceland‘s new data on education enrolment. The largest decrease among men was observed among 25-year-olds, where the enrolment rate fell from 13.7% in 2024 to 10.8% in 2025. Among women, the largest decrease was among 26-year-olds , from 20.7% to 18.0%.
There were over 20,200 children attending pre-primary schools in Iceland in December 2024. The proportion of children attending pre-primary school was 88% and had increased by 2% from previous year, when compared with children 1-5 years old. The proportion of one year olds in pre-primary schools varies greatly by region, highest 84% in the Westfjords and lowest in the Southwest, 9%. That year 258…
A total of 5,276 students graduated from university in 2024. The largest number of graduates were from the field of social sciences, and women made up the majority of graduates in most fields. In total, 3,630 university graduates were female and 1,646 were male. Roughly half of the graduates, or 51.4%, completed a first university degree, of whom 1,775 were female and 937 were male.
During the school year 2024-2025 81.8% of teaching staff in compulsory schools in Iceland had a teaching licence, compared with 81.3 in the previous year. The number of teachers with a teaching licence increased by 57 from the autumn of 2023.
In the autumn of 2017 there were 2,213 new entrants in three year Bachelor’s degree programmes in universities in Iceland. Three years later, 42.3% had graduated on time with a bachelor’s degree. An additional 1.3% had graduated from other tertiary programmes, such as two-year diploma programmes.
There were 44,758 students attending education at levels above compulsory education in Iceland in the autumn of 2024, an increase of 1,312 students from the previous year, or 3.0%. There were more students attending all levels except for the doctoral level, where there were 52 fewer students than in the previous year.
There were 47,162 pupils in compulsory education in Iceland in the autumn of 2024, 345 fewer than in the previous year, a 0.7% decrease. A total of 174 compulsory schools were operating in Iceland in the 2024-2025 school year, one fewer than in the previous year. Private schools were 13 with almost 1,560 pupils, the largest number of pupils ever attending private compulsory schools. Three public…
More than 64% of 4,411 new entrants at the upper secondary level of education in 2019 had graduated in 2023, a similar proportion as among new entrants in 2018. Almost 15% of new entrants were still in education without having graduated four years after entering and almost 21% had dropped out.