EUROPEAN FORUM FOR NEW IDEAS 2014

Transcription

1 EUROPEAN FORUM FOR NEW IDEAS 2014 Lunch debate, Friday, 3 October 2014, 13:45-15:15 Partner: POMERANIAN SPECIAL ECONOMIC ZONE Vocational training: a trap or a key to solving the unemployment problem? Issues: Is educational reform in general and vocational development in particular the right way to combat the high rates of youth unemployment and to prepare young people for future requirements of the labour market? Is it enough to reverse the trends? What are employers expectations regarding qualifications of future employees? How can businesses and local governments engage in the process of educating future employees? How to rebuild the prestige of vocational training and encourage young people to start this type of education? According to the Central Statistical Office in Poland (GUS), out of the 2.18 million unemployed who had registered with public employment services as of the end of the first quarter of 2014, (17.5%) were below 25 years of age. The good news is that the number of the unemployed youth fell by in comparison to the same quarter of previous year. Still, the situation is serious compared to the end of the fourth quarter of 2013, the number grew by It is possible that after 25 years of Poland's economic freedom, the country has lost its battle against youth unemployment. What is more, it has been losing it again and again, for this phenomenon is not new. The proof is in the statistics. As of the end of 2005, the number of unemployed below 25 years of age was Two years later the number shrank by nearly a half. Considering Poland's recent 1

2 EU accession at that time, it is not difficult to imagine where many of those unemployed have gone. For the moment the problem took care of itself and disappeared from public debate. Meanwhile, as a result of the downturn in the economy, the unemployment among the young spiked again, and the problem has reappeared. Is educational reform in general and vocational development in particular the right way to combat the high rates of youth unemployment and to prepare young people for future requirements of the labour market? Is it enough to reverse the trends? The myth of higher education, which had prompted many young people to go to universities, is largely to blame for the youth's current situation on the labour market. Presently there are fears that the concept of vocational training will turn out to be another such myth, especially considering Polish politics, where some problems are solved by chaotic, emergency actions, instead of long-term strategies. An example of such actions is the pilot programme of government-ordered faculties, meant to provide the answer to an insufficient number of science and technology graduates. In 2008, 718 people enrolled for EU-funded bachelor degree courses. By July 2011, 148 students had graduated. The promise of substantial scholarships in the amount of PLN 1000 the project's main attraction did not help. The programme cost PLN 53 million. If vocational schools are to be the answer to our hopes, we must remain level-headed and approach the problem comprehensively, and not by spontaneous actions that are seen in Polish politics so often. Therefore we should consider what type of vocational schools we want. Empirical studies carried out in Germany, France, and Holland have proven the superiority of a dual education system, where part of the teaching takes place at prospective employers', rather than at school only, as the traditional model would suggest. The studies further show that students trained in the dual system more often found employment and their wages were higher than those of their counterparts who had been trained only at schools. It is worth noting that with the lapse of time of their leaving school, the first group's advantage gradually waned, possibly because of the other group catching up on the job. The German Institute for the Study of Labour (IZA) at the University of Bonn also reports that vocational school graduates tend to lose their jobs faster than people with other types of education. This may be linked to the fact that their knowledge of the field becomes insufficient due to technological progress. So it would be good to think about this problem as well, when planning for the next years. 2

3 Some researchers say that vocational school reform should be accompanied by a change in the educational system to allow even young children to learn entrepreneurship. It would mean teaching young people a trait which would make it easier for them to find work right after they enter the labour market. It would also ensure that they have more initiative when looking for job opportunities, more skill to easily detect market possibilities, including the ability to apply their qualifications in unusual ways. What are employers expectations regarding qualifications of future employees? Growing rates of youth unemployment have provoked a deluge of questions about the education students receive at universities. There is even a saying that Polish higher education system consists of 'unemployment factories', releasing a mass product that the labour market is not interested in. Employers point to the fact that university graduates do not have required skills. This has been one of the direct motives for an ongoing higher education system reform. Meanwhile, studies prove that employers are ready to share the responsibility for training future employees. A study 'Expectations of the Employers vs Future Employees', commissioned by the Polish Agency for Enterprise Development (PARP) and published in 2012, demonstrates that a vast majority of employers declare their willingness to complete the training of young employees on the job, while 20% of them are ready to conduct the entire process of preparing an employee for the required position. Nevertheless, when it comes to the requirement of previous experience, employers who seek to employ labourers or specialists have the highest expectations in this regard. Vocational schools may be just the right answer to their needs. Beside professional skills, soft skills are predominant among qualifications required by employers from prospective employees. They include: interpersonal skills, communication skills, good manners, and self-presentation skills. Interestingly, equal value was placed on such traits as responsibility, discipline, honesty, credibility, willingness to work hard, diligence, meticulousness and paying attention to detail. This suggests that reformed vocational education might serve its students better by teaching them these qualities in advance. How can businesses and local governments engage in the process of educating future employees? 3

4 For many years experts have been repeatedly saying that education is an investment in the future. It is in the interest of the government because in the long run it will pay off in the form of tax revenues. Good planning is the key. It will allow adjusting education to the requirements of a specific labour market, thus limiting 'losses' the probability that a public school graduate will not be able to find work. This problem can be observed most often in smaller municipalities, which are not able to guarantee that graduates of publicly-funded secondary schools receive good higher education or find employment later. From the perspective of local governments, this translates into real losses and hinders the development of a diverse, local labour market. In order to solve this problem, it is very important that local governments and business communities work together to make sure that school curricula meet the needs of business. Here again we can see the potential of the dual education model. With students being able to gain professional experience only in existing local business establishments, school curricula would naturally adjust to the requirements of the local labour market. How to rebuild the prestige of vocational training and encourage young people to start this type of education? The debate on vocational schools must not ignore a more elusive factor: the prestige linked with graduating from specific types of schools. Currently vocational schools are not enjoying a good reputation; certainly they are far from prestigious. This can be easily understood looking at statistics. According to GUS, people with basic vocational education are the second largest group of the professionally inactive, equivalent to exactly 3 million in the second quarter of A Study on the Population's Economic Activity (BAEL) estimates that this group is followed closely by the 2.43 million graduates of post-secondary and secondary vocational schools. The largest group of professionally inactive comprises people with primary, incomplete primary, and lower secondary education 5.25 million in the second quarter of this year. Paradoxically, holders of a higher education diploma comprise the smallest group of 1.34 million. The same proportion is true for figures regarding the registered unemployed. Over the last ten years employment agencies were visited by graduates of basic vocational schools most often; as of the end of the first quarter of this year, their number was , out of the mentioned 2.18 million unemployed. They were also visited by people with elementary, incomplete elementary, and lower secondary education, followed by the unemployed with vocational secondary education ( ). 4

5 Naturally, most vocational schools graduates mentioned earlier are already middle-aged. This does not change the fact that they constitute a real problem for the market, and if we are to invest in vocational schools, we must consider mechanisms that would prevent this situation from occurring. What is more, negative perception of vocational schools is a problem not only for prospective students. It also reflects the attitude of the employers. The PARP-commissioned study discussed earlier demonstrates that employers also prefer to hire people with secondary education. After all, the example of glorification of education comes from the very top: the state requires a higher education diploma even when recruiting for low, clerical positions. AUTHOR: JAKUB KAPISZEWSKI, JOURNALIST, DZIENNIK GAZETA PRAWNA 5