|
Contents | Executive Summary | How to obtain this publication | Additional information
The following OECD assessment and recommendations summarise Chapter 3 of the Economic survey of the Slovak Republic published on 5 April 2007.
Contents
Education has a vital role to play in achieving economic and social sustainability
Improving education outcomes is a vital part of Slovakia’s strategy to catch-up with living standards in the advanced European countries. Better outcomes raise productivity and employment prospects and, if distributed more evenly, reduce income inequality and poverty. While some education outcomes are favourable, such as the low secondary-school dropout rate, others have room for improvement:
-
Education achievement is below the OECD average according to the 2003 OECD PISA study and is strongly influenced by socio-economic background. Roma children, who are mainly from lower socio-economic backgrounds and represent a significant and growing share of children, have particularly poor achievement;
-
Labour-market outcomes for graduates of secondary vocational programmes not leading to tertiary education are poor (unemployment rates for such persons are much higher than for other persons with upper secondary attainment), suggesting that these programmes are not equipping graduates with skills to cope with adverse structural shocks; and
-
Tertiary attainment is low (12% of the population aged 25-64), albeit rising (14% of 25 34 year olds, compared with an OECD average of 31%).
The effect of students' socio-economic background on 2003 PISA scores in selected OECD countries(1)
1. This graph shows coefficient estimates with 95% confidence intervals for the variable 'Highest occupational status of parents' from the multiple regression analysis in Carey and Ernst (2006) (summarised in Table 1 and described in more detail in Annex A1 of Carey and Ernst, 2006). The OECD average is calculated for all OECD countries with available data (see ibid, Table 1).
Source: OECD, PISA 2003 and OECD calculations.
Education reforms are needed to improve student achievement and reduce the impact of socio-economic background
International evidence shows that early childhood education has a significant effect on learning in subsequent stages of education, especially for children from lower socio-economic backgrounds. Accordingly, the authorities plan to increase participation in kindergarten by making it free of charge for five-year olds from 2008 onwards. A practical difficulty with increasing participation is that kindergartens are not available throughout the country, especially in poor districts with large Roma populations. The government should ensure that municipalities not offering an adequate supply of kindergartens are financially able to do so and in fact do so. Moreover, efforts should be made to increase participation of children from lower socio-economic backgrounds from four years of age. This would be particularly helpful for Roma children as many do not attend kindergarten but stand to gain much from doing so, notably through greater competence in the language of instruction at school.
International evidence also suggests that the impact of socio-economic background on student performance is greater in countries, such as Slovakia, that have highly differentiated education systems than in other countries. So as to reduce segmentation, the authorities have encouraged the integration of technical secondary schools (55% of students), which prepare students for tertiary education, and vocational secondary schools (20% of students), which lead to early labour-market entry. This process should be taken further by also encouraging the integration of technical secondary schools and grammar schools, with the general education courses common to both tracks being offered jointly. Moreover, the age of selection into general and vocational tracks should be delayed, until 16. This would reduce socio-economic segregation in schools and would increase the amount of general education received by vocational secondary school students, providing them with a stronger foundation for subsequent learning.
Raising teacher quality would also improve achievement, especially for children with learning difficulties. The government has increased teacher salaries significantly in the past three years from very low levels by international comparison to attract better quality candidates and is considering further increases that would bring salaries in relation to average earnings near to the OECD average. Particularly large increases are planned for foreign-language teachers to overcome shortages, although there are also shortages of mathematics and science teachers. For higher salaries to be as effective as possible in improving teaching quality, the authorities should ensure that recruitment and selection mechanisms are well designed, that initial teacher education prepares candidates well, and that teachers are encouraged continuously to upgrade their practice. School leadership also needs to be strong and to be given flexibility to manage while being held accountable for outcomes. In this framework, it is essential that school managers be given the competence for hiring and firing teachers. Moreover, the largest salary increases should be used to attract high quality teachers to schools with children from disadvantaged socio-economic backgrounds. The policy of focussing larger pay increases on foreign-language teachers should be generalised to other subjects where there are skill shortages.
Vocational secondary school education should be made more pertinent to labour-market requirements
Vocational secondary schools lost touch with enterprises following the fall of communism. In the virtual absence of apprenticeship training, applied learning takes place in vocational schools, often using outdated equipment. To make vocational secondary education more relevant to labour-market requirements, greater employer involvement should be sought both in terms of curricula development and practical training (more apprenticeships). The automobile industry provides an encouraging example of how such education can be turned around with greater employer involvement. The measures discussed above to raise achievement and reduce the impact of socio-economic background more generally would also help to prepare students in these schools better for the labour market.
Tertiary education needs to be made more attractive for technical secondary school graduates
A relatively high proportion of technical secondary school graduates, who are qualified to enter university, do not in fact go on to tertiary education. One reason for this is that there are few relatively short (2-3 years) occupationally oriented courses (i.e., tertiary-type B programmes), which are likely to be attractive to many students from the (large) technical secondary school track. Priority should be given to developing such programmes. Another tertiary-education barrier for technical secondary school graduates is that they often fail to get high enough scores in university entrance exams to be admitted as full-time students, who do not pay tuition fees, to the most popular universities. In these circumstances, applicants can apply as part-time students paying “unofficial” fees (around €1 000 per year in the most popular universities), in which case they have a much higher chance of being accepted, or of going to a less attractive university. To reduce this barrier to participation and to make the financing of tertiary education fairer, unofficial fees should be banned. Moreover, the government should reconsider its policy of not introducing tuition fees for full-time students as this reduces incentives for efficiency in the tertiary education sector and undermines social equity, the greatest benefits going to the better off. Any such fees should be aligned for full-time and part-time students and be set so as to make a significant contribution to costs in light of the high tertiary earnings premium in Slovakia and the limited progression in the tax system. In the event that (official) tuition fees were introduced, loans with income-contingent repayments, as in a number of other OECD countries, should be made available to ensure that liquidity constraints do not exclude some students and to reduce the risk on returns to private investment in tertiary education.
How to obtain this publication
The Policy Brief (pdf format) can be downloaded. It contains the OECD assessment and recommendations but not all of the charts included on the above pages.
The complete edition of the Economic survey of the Slovak Republic 2007 is available from:
- SourceOECD for subscribing institutions and many libraries
-
-
OLISnet, under "Publication Locator", for government officials with accounts ( subscribe)
-
Additional information
For further information please contact the Slovak Republic Desk at the OECD Economics Department at eco.survey@oecd.org. The OECD Secretariat's report was prepared by David Carey and Andres Fuentes under the supervision of Patrick Lenain.
|
Economic Policy Reforms: Going for Growth 2008
