A/HRC/28/59/Add.1 school levels were merged, while teachers’ salaries have remained low by international standards.38 61. Iceland has one of the highest rates of early school leaving in Europe, with boys and immigrant children being at particular risk of dropping out of upper secondary school before attaining the minimum qualifications. The Independent Expert notes that, in its White Paper on Educational Reform, the Government identified tackling secondary school dropout as one of its priorities.39 62. The Independent Expert recommends that financial literacy be included in the school curriculum, as a preventive measure. The report of the Special Investigative Commission could be summarized in a more accessible form and discussed in schools. Social and economic rights should be made more visible in the existing curriculum on democracy and human rights, which should include more information on the rights of citizens as clients of banks and how individuals can use existing mechanisms at the national or international level to ensure that their social rights are respected. This should include information about Icelandic institutions that defend the rights of citizens in the social and economic sphere. E. Right to adequate housing and individual debt relief 63. Past housing policies were nearly exclusively aimed at promoting loan-based home ownership. In the aftermath of the crisis, the value of loans indexed to foreign currency skyrocketed; such loans were popular among the population prior to the banking crash, owing to the spread between the local and foreign currencies, and had been sold recklessly to consumers, in breach of national law provisions. Banks also engaged in competition to offer credit to consumers, but after the crash, thousands of citizens were caught in a debt trap when the value of the Icelandic krona depreciated drastically. Suddenly, many Icelandic homeowners had private debt outstripping the value of their homes and were unable to repay their debts to commercial banks and the Housing Financing Fund. 64. The Government reacted by introducing several debt relief schemes and by imposing moratoria on foreclosures. In August 2010, the Government established the Office of the Debtor’s Ombudsman, funded by a levy on financial institutions, which could negotiate with various lenders on behalf of debtors . Initially, most requests for debt mitigation came from homeowners; however, that trend shifted in 2014. Today, more than half of all debt mitigation applicants live in rented homes.40 There is a worrying trend of a smaller group of people who are heavily indebted and who can neither afford to pay their daily living costs, including housing, nor repay their debt. It is doubtful whether additional debt relief initiatives taken by the current Government in 2014 will adequately and definitively solve the situation of these households. According to views expressed to the Independent Expert, further targeted debt relief for heavily indebted poor households would not present risks to the restructured commercial banks or the Housing Financing Fund, which have largely written off those liabilities on their balance sheets. 38 39 40 20 Steinunn Helga Lárusdóttir and others, “The Economic Collapse and the Impact on Schools in Iceland”, research project by the School of Education, University of Iceland (unpublished); also Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, Economic survey of Iceland 2013, p. 101. European Commission, “Reducing early school leaving: key messages and policy support” (November 2013), p. 32, available from http://ec.europa.eu/education/policy/strategicframework/doc/esl-group-report_en.pdf; and Iceland, Ministry of Education, Science and Culture, “White paper on education reform” (Reykjavik, 2014). Data provided by the Debtors’ Ombudsman to the Independent Expert.