Measuring the effectiveness of an education system is crucial for the design of adequate social and economic policies. It is also a complex task that requires not only objective indicators built on quality data, but also a holistic and systematic approach to matching education and labour market systems better.

An ESF project on monitoring educational and professional trajectories of VET graduates in Poland, carried out by the Educational Research Institute, will address these issues by 2019.

The project develops, tests and implements tools for the systematic monitoring of VET graduate trajectories, mainly based on administrative data allowing for whole population analyses. Public administration registries have a variety of data – useful for monitoring graduate pathways – that are currently used only for general public services: the project shows how such data, of good quality and range, can be used more extensively. The databases used in the project primarily include social security (professional trajectories) and education system (educational trajectories) resources.

The project includes three rounds of qualitative and quantitative data collection on beneficiary needs and expectations, as well as information on the determinants of graduates’ decisions. A VET graduate questionnaire will test the tools developed. Basic vocational and technical vocational school graduates will take part in the survey. In the last few years, the institute has surveyed many VET school pupils to establish a panel for this project.

The tools designed in the project will enable the trajectories of all VET graduates to be monitored at national, regional, local, and even school levels.