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The Impact of the 1999 Education Reform in Poland

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Abstract

Increasing the share of vocational secondary schooling has been a mainstay of development policy for decades, especially in formerly socialist countries. However, the transition to market economies led to significant restructuring of school systems and a decline in the number of vocational students. Exposing more students to a general curriculum could improve academic abilities. To test the hypothesis that delayed vocational streaming improves academic outcomes, this paper analyses Poland’s significant improvement in international achievement tests and the restructuring of the education system, which expanded general schooling. Using propensity-score matching and difference-in-differences estimates, the authors show that delaying vocational education had a positive and significant impact on student performance on the order of one standard deviation. L’expansion de l’enseignement secondaire professionnel a été un pilier de la politique de développement pendant plusieurs décennies, peut-être davantage dans les anciens pays socialistes que partout ailleurs. La transition a cependant conduit à une importante restructuration des systèmes scolaires, et notamment à une diminution de la proportion d’élèves en enseignement professionnel. L’augmentation de la proportion d’élèves inscrits en filières générales pourrait améliorer les aptitudes aux études supérieures. Cet article analyse la forte amélioration des scores obtenus par la Pologne aux tests internationaux et la restructuration du système éducatif qui a développé l’enseignement général afin de tester l’hypothèse de l’amélioration des résultats induite par une orientation plus tardive en classes de niveau. À partir d’estimations obtenues par appariement sur scores de propension et par différence de différences, les auteurs montrent que l’orientation plus tardive en filières professionnelles a eu un impact positif important, de l’ordre d’un écart-type, sur les résultats des élèves.

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  • Oecd, 2011. "The Impact of the 1999 Education Reform in Poland," OECD Education Working Papers 49, OECD Publishing.
    • Handle: RePEc:oec:eduaab:49-en
    DOI: 10.1787/5kmbjgkm1m9x-en
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    3. Torben M. Andersen & Giuseppe Bertola & John Driffill & Harold James & Hans-Werner Sinn & Jan-Egbert Sturm & Branko Uroševic, 2016. "Chapter 3: Tuning Secondary Education," EEAG Report on the European Economy, CESifo, vol. 0, pages 70-84, February.
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    6. Michał Myck & Mateusz Najsztub, 2020. "Implications of the Polish 1999 administrative reform for regional socio‐economic development," Economics of Transition and Institutional Change, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 28(4), pages 559-579, October.
    7. Avitabile,Ciro & Bobba,Matteo & Pariguana,Marco, 2015. "High school track choice and financial constraints : evidence from urban Mexico," Policy Research Working Paper Series 7427, The World Bank.
    8. A. Gaunand & L. Colinet & P.-B. Joly & M. Matt, 2022. "Counting what really counts? Assessing the political impact of science," The Journal of Technology Transfer, Springer, vol. 47(3), pages 699-721, June.
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