Page 16 - Book of Abstracts 2021

Study 1 2021 Social status in Vocational Education and Training (VET) in the Czech Republic over the past 15 years, and an international comparison February 2021 Study 1 / 2021 Social status in Vocational Education and Training (VET) in the Czech Republic over the past 15 years, and an international comparison2 FEBRUARY 2021 VÁCLAV KORBEL A DANIEL MÜNICH Summary • The Czech Republic (CZ) has an historically strong system of vocational education and training (VET), which around 30% of first-year high school (HS) students enter each year. How many students should enter VET has often been debated. However, which students select into VET and how their composition has changed over time has been less examined. • This study maps these phenomena by measuring the social status linked to VET programs in the Czech Republic since 2003. Based on previous literature, we define social status as the relative difference in PISA scores of first-year VET students compared to first year students at other types of high schools. The social status thus reflects which students chose VET, and is the sum of various factors that influenced their choice – the expected quality of education, employment prospects after graduation, and the perception and opinions of parents and primary school classmates. If the relative PISA scores of VET students decreased in comparison to those of students who entered other types of high schools from one PISA wave to another, we can interpret this as a decrease in the social status of VET students. • We use PISA data from 2003 to 2018. The PISA survey tested fifteen-year-old students in their final months of primary school and early in their first year of HS. The data is representative for the different types of HS. For the international context, we subsequently expand the analysis to include 14 European countries that participated in the 2018 PISA 2 This study represents the authors´ view, and not the official position of the Czech Academy of Sciences´ Economics institute nor of the Charles University Centre for Economic Research and Graduate Education (CERGE). We thank Josef Basl, Karel Gargulák, Štěpán Jurajd, Filip Pertold and Jiří Vojtěch for valuable comments and advice. All possible inaccuracies and errors are the responsibility of the authors. The study received support from PMI Czech Republic and the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic within the AV21 Strategy program. BACK TO CONTENTS 3 14