Poland Skilling Up the Next Generation

Abstract

Facing the prospects of rapid demographic aging and decline over the coming decades, Poland needs a highly skilled workforce to help generate the productivity growth that it needs to fuel continued convergence of its living standards with those of its West European neighbors. Skilling up the workforce starts with equipping youth with the right cognitive and socio-emotional foundation skills. International research has identified three dimensions of skills that matter for good employment outcomes and economic growth: cognitive skills, such as literacy, numeracy, and creative and critical thinking or problem solving; socio-emotional skills and behavioral traits, such as conscientiousness, grit, and openness to experience; and job- or occupation-specific technical skills, such as the ability to work as an engineer. This report focuses on cognitive skills. It examines results for Poland from the program for international student assessment (PISA), which assesses the mathematics, reading, and science competencies of 15-year-olds. The overall effects of reform on Poland’s PISA scores have been positive, although isolating the precise impact of each reform element is difficult. There is evidence from PISA assessments replicated for older students in upper-secondary education in 2006, 2009 and 2012 that performance gaps previously found between vocational and general schools for 15-year-olds prior to the 1999 reform persist today in upper secondary education, where the performance of students in vocational upper-secondary schools trails that of their peers in general education.