As announced in Cedefop’s National news on VET (2021), the Ministry of Education and Science published the results of an analysis of the career pathways of school graduates from 2019 and 2020. The report was prepared by the Educational Research Institute under a project jointly financed with the European Social Fund.

This is the first report of a series that will be published annually describing the education and professional situation of secondary school graduates.

In addition to the published national report, the Educational Research Institute prepared several thousands of reports summarising the situation of graduates of individual VET schools, which were available to school directors from July 2022. Among approximately 384 000 graduates from 2019 and 383 000 graduates from 2020, 28% to 29% completed vocational upper secondary programmes, depending on the year of education. About 14% were graduates of post-secondary school programmes, 10% to 11% completed first-stage vocational programmes, and less than 1% job training programmes provided to learners with special needs.

The report offered several important findings:

  • of all graduates from VET programmes, graduates of vocational upper secondary education programmes most often confirmed their professional qualifications – diplomas confirming professional qualifications were awarded to 70% of the vocational upper secondary programme graduates in 2019, and to 72% in 2020;
  • 37% of the 2019 graduates of the first stage of professional programmes were employed in their year of graduation. Among the graduates of 2020, 36% were employed. Graduates of 2019 had the greatest increase in employment between December 2019 and December 2020 – from 37% to 45%;
  • in December of the year of graduation, 10% of 2019 vocational upper secondary programme graduates were unemployed, while this rate among graduates of first-stage vocational programmes was 16%;
  • the number of unemployed graduates varies widely across regions, regardless of the type of school completed;
  • among the graduates of all types of vocational schools, those having completed vocational upper secondary programmes most often continued their studies in higher education – 38% of 2020 graduates.
  • graduates of first-stage vocational programmes continued their education relatively rarely. In December, after having completed such a programme, 17% of 2020 graduates were continuing their education, while another 12% were combining study with work;
  • the 2020 graduates of first-stage vocational programmes had the highest share of individuals continuing education in general programmes for adults – 24%. Another 4% chose second-stage vocational programmes, which began operating on 1 September 2020, and about 1% decided to take vocational qualification courses;
  • among graduates who were not in programmes offering study as a juvenile worker, slightly more than half were awarded a vocational qualification diploma (54% of graduates from both 2019 and 2020).

The report was prepared using data from the Educational Information System (SIO), district examination boards (OKE), the Integrated Information Network on Science and Higher Education (POL-on) and the Social Insurance Institution (ZUS). The next monitoring report is currently being prepared, covering also graduates from 2021. Work is also underway to match the presentation of results better to the needs of different audiences.

Read more

The report on the analysis of the career pathways of school graduates from 2019 and 2020 (in Polish)

Please cite this news item as:

Please cite this news item as: ReferNet Poland; Cedefop (2022). Poland: first findings of the secondary school graduate monitoring. National news on VET