Life after initial VET can also lead to further education

Young VET graduates should experience smooth transitions, not only to the labour market, but also, if they wish, to further learning opportunities. This is particularly important in countries where VET is undervalued.

By adopting appropriate measures (such as offering flexible learning pathways, appropriate guidance, etc), policies should ensure that VET graduates can also have the possibility to continue in further education and training. Actual use of such a possibility should also be monitored (Bruges communiqué).

Key points

• Compared to graduates from the general stream of education, young with VET qualifications show a lower propensity to continue in further education and training. This reflects structural differences between general and vocational education, with the former mainly preparing for further studies and the latter mainly preparing for the world of work.
• But for young people initial VET is not a dead-end pathway to further learning. In the EU, an average of 31% of young aged 18 to 24 and holding a VET qualification were in further education and training in 2009.
• However, major differences are found across countries. In 2009, young VET graduates showed the highest propensity to continue in further education and training in Denmark and Slovenia (over 50%).
• Lowest propensity to continue in further education and training (less than 20%) were reported in Estonia, Greece, Cyprus and Ireland (where VET also registers relatively low enrolment rates) as well as in Germany (where instead VET is quite a frequent choice connected to high employment rates).

Notes

Data for Cyprus and Estonia should be interpreted with caution due to small sample sizes. Data for Lithuania, Latvia and Malta are excluded due to very small sizes.

In interpreting the data, it is necessary to take possible differences in the structure of national VET systems into account. More information on the structure of systems can be found in Cedefop’s VET in Europe database.

The indicator considered here is the percentage of young VET graduates (18-24 year-olds) who were in further education and training in the four weeks prior to the survey. Further education and training is defined as further formal or non formal education and training (at any level). For comparison, the indicator is also calculated for graduates from the general stream of education. In both cases, data refer to young holding an upper secondary or post-secondary non-tertiary qualification (ISCED levels 3 and 4), as their highest educational attainments when entering further training. Young with ISCED 3c short qualifications are excluded, Data come from the 2009 ad hoc module of the EU labour force survey.