EVALUACIÓN DEL PROCESO DE ENSEÑANZA

In Germany, traineeships are an important part of the curriculum as well as a way to teach practical skills. Vocational school stu- dents enter into traineeship agreements with employers, under which they are obliged to study and work part-time over a period of three years (three days a week). Traineeships are supervised by tutors. School – based learning and work are complementary– hence the term dual system. Traineeships provide an opportunity to specialise in a wide range of professions and for the sake of guaranteeing quality of education, the curriculum is monitored and adjusted in accordance with the needs of the labour market. The accreditation of skills gained at work plays an important role in the system. Work agreements are registered and monitored by associations of employers from various businesses and their curriculum is regulated by law provisions enacted at the federal level by the government and social partners. At the end of their traineeships, trainees take a vocational examination and obtain a cer- tificate. This gives vocational school students a guarantee that the qualifications gained with a given employer will be recognised when searching for a job with a different company.

One important element of the dual system is the method of distributing the cost of traineeships. The costs of schooling are covered by local authorities, whereas employers finance the training at the workplace (apprentice and trainee wages, labour cost of tutors, equipment cost, etc.). The employment terms applicable to trainees are determined under collective agreements for particular professions – in most cases trainee wages reach approx. 25-45 percent of the average wage in a given profession and at the same time they constitute – as a rule – one third of a wage that a young worker receives after the end of his or her traineeship. The suc- cess of the German dual system is largely attributed to the participation and cooperation of schools, employers and trade unions in the process of occupational preparation of young people.

Notwithstanding the above, this system is criticised, among others, because the list of professions which allow for the organisation of traineeships is being extended too slowly compared with the changes in labour demand. Moreover, there is lively public debate on the distribution of cost of traineeships, which presently burdens mainly employers. The main drawback of vocational training is a narrow range of specialist skills taught to young workers which is the reason why these people – due to a limited level of general knowledge – may experience difficulties with reskilling. On the other hand, the supporters of the dual system emphasise that it shortens the job searching time of people who – because of, for example, limited cognitive abilities and/or motivation to study, would not be able to complete education at the higher and more general level (Arum, Shavit, 1995). From this perspective, the adverse consequences of vocational training for further career and professional mobility are to some extent a “smaller evil”, whereas its one unquestionable advantage is the fact of providing less talented or ambitious teens with a “good start”.

Based on Cockrill, Scott (1997), Ryan (2000), Euridice (2006), Quintini & Martin (2007)

Importantly enough, these curves are “steeper” in the case of temporary work. Hence, people who do not find a job within a couple of months from the completion of their education stand greater chances of finding a job in the form of temporary or casual work rather than open-ended work. They are more inclined to accept temporary work than immediately after the end of studies, whereas from the point of view of employers, temporary work makes it possible for them to verify the skills of graduates who remain jobless for a relatively long period. This does not mean, however, that increasing incidence of fixed term contracts contributes to decreasing job search duration by graduates, but the fact that such job offers are available in some sense opens up working opportunities to people whose stand relatively little chance of taking up open-ended work as their first job.

Chart II.11.

Kaplan-Meier curves showing the probability of staying unemployed conditional on not finding a temporary job among young people by graduation year

Chart II.12.

Kaplan-Meier curves showing the probability of staying unemployed conditional on not finding a permanent job among young people by graduation year

Remarks: The curves present the conditional probability of staying out of employment and of not taking up employment of a given type during period t, provided that a graduate remains unemployed up to the moment t

Source: Own calculations based on data derived from the School Leavers Survey carried out within the project A Study on Labour Market Activity of Graduates in the Context of the Programme First Job

0. 00 0. 25 0. 50 0. 75 1. 00 0 2 0 4 0 6 0 l e n g t h of t h e s p e l l f r o m g r a d u a t i o n (in m o n t hs) l e n g t h of t h e s p e l l f r o m g r a d u a t i o n (in m o n t hs) 0. 00 0. 25 0. 50 0. 75 1. 00 0 2 0 4 0 6 0 year 19 9 8 year 19 9 9 year 20 0 0 year 2001 year 2002 year 2003 year 20 0 4 year 200 5 year 19 9 8 year 19 9 9 year 20 0 0 year 2001 year 2002 year 2003 year 20 0 4 year 200 5

Unfortunately, on the basis of available data it is impossible to assess what are the further professional paths of graduates undertaking temporary work and especially whether such work experience helps them find stable employment in the future. However, in the case of the unemployed aged 15-29 – similarly to the entire population of the unemployed discussed in the previous sub-chapter – there are good reasons to claim that people who take up temporary employment stand greater chances of taking up permanent employ- ment than those who remain unemployed.50 _{In 2005-2006, temporary workers were much more often employed a year later and the}

share of workers employed under open-ended contracts was greater by 8 percentage points than in the control group of unemployed people in 2004 and 2005 alike. Hence, it can be assumed that the fact of taking up temporary work – apart from providing higher income to those who worked than those who remained unemployed – improved the labour market prospects of young unemployed people.

Last but not least, it is worth noting that the increasing use of non-permanent work contracts in the Polish labour market has trans- lated into the change of dynamics of graduates entering the labour market – the probability of their undertaking the first job under an open-ended contract was deteriorating from year to year over the period 1998-2005 (see Charts II.11-II.12) and the probability of their undertaking temporary work was increasing.

3.3. Part-time work and flexible working time versus participation of women in Poland

The relatively lower participation of women in comparison to of men results from their higher propensity to leave the labour market at two life stages. The first stage comes at early reproductive age, when resignation from work is due to bringing up children, whereas the second one comes at pre-retirement age. The comparison of women’s participation patterns in Poland and in the EU15 indicates that women’s labour supply is highest between the age of 30 and 50, although in Poland the participation of women is slightly more diversified in terms of age. The interrelation of atypical employment forms and labour supply among older people is further discussed in the next Sub-chapter – here the emphasis is on the participation of women, who persistently constitute a “vulnerable” group in the Polish labour market because family duties are still largely the domain of women rather than of their partners. The economic inactivity of women in Poland corresponds to their commitment to care over children and the elderly (see Charts II.13-II.14). Studies concerning preferences for different family models in the Polish society demonstrate that young people are much more inclined to approve of the equal partner relationship model (Kotowska et al., 2007). This means that in their generation men will contribute to child-rearing more often than it was the case in their parents’ generation. Nevertheless, the problem of combining work and family responsibilities as well as the policies solving this problem and related to atypical employment forms concern above all women.

Chart II.13.

Participation during the life cycle of men and women in Poland and in the EU15 in 2006

Chart II.14.

Share of people taking care of children or the elderly by age and gender in Poland

Source: Own calculations based on Eurostat data Source: GUS, 2005.

The possibility of reducing working time is an attractive solution to the conflict between professional career and family life. In the literature on the subject it is often argued that the increase in women’s employment in Western Europe was above all due to the fact that child-rearing mothers limited their working time rather than resigned from work (OECD, 2001), which made it possible for them to stay in touch with the professional environment throughout the maternity period. In Poland, however, few women with small children follow this route (Kotowska et al. 2007, Matysiak, Steinmetz, 2005, OECD 2001) and they are much more likely to opt for full-time work or to withdraw from the labour market. Chart II.15 shows the labour market status of mothers rearing children of up to 7 years in selected European countries. Poland as well as other Central and Eastern European countries are characterised by decision polarisation when it comes to labour supply of mothers, namely by low part-time employment plus a relatively high share of non-working women and a rather large share of women who combine full-time work with child-rearing.

50 _{Similarly to Sub-chapter 3.1, we have compared the flows in 2005-2006 of people who were out of employment in 2004 but who had temporary jobs in 2005 with people having similar} individual profiles who remained out of employment in 2005.

0 10 2 030 4 0 5 0 6 070 8 0 9 0 10 0 15 -19 2 0 -24 2 5 -2 9 3 0 -3 4 35 -39 4 0 - 4 4 45 - 49 5 0 -5 4 0 10 2 0 30 4 0 5 0 6 0 70 8 0 9 0 10 0

EU15 women Poland women EU15 men Poland men

0.0 % 5.0 % 10.0 % 15.0 % 20.0 % 2 5.0 % 15 -19 2 0 -24 2 5 -2 9 30 -3 4 35 - 4 4 45 -5 4 55 - 6 4 men women

Chart II.15.

Labour market status of women aged 18-39 with a child of less than 7 years in selected European countries in 2006

Source: Own calculations based on data derived from ESS 2006.

Labour supply decisions are determined by institutional and structural factors and women’s labour market participation patterns are related to some extent by the welfare regime. The classification of welfare regimes presented by Esping-Andersen (1990) distin- guishes three major regimes: “liberal”, “social democratic” and “conservative”. Part-time work is an element of activation of women under the second regime, whereas under the liberal regime, social policies do not enhance women’s participation but – as opposed to the conservative regime – they also do not provide systemic solutions which strengthen the traditional division of labour. However, post-communist countries, including Poland, do not neatly fit into the above-mentioned classification. Hence, it is worthwhile to com- pare the empirical regularities of time allocation of women as well as the institutional determinants in three countries representing the above welfare state models and in Poland. We intend to assess how family situation – especially the number and age of children – affects the probability of women aged 18-39 undertaking part-time work in Poland, Germany, Sweden and United Kingdom against the probability of their staying out or employment or working full-time.51