Why so slow? The school-to-work transition in Italy

Abstract

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. This essay provides a comprehensive interpretative framework to understand the reasons why the school-to-work transition (SWT) is so slow and hard in Italy. The country is a typical example of the South European SWT regime, where the educational system is typically rigid and sequential, the labor market has been recently made more flexible through two-tier labor market reforms, and the family has typicallyan important role to absorb the individual and social cost of the passage to adulthood. The main thesis of this essay is that the traditional disorganization of the educational and training system coupled with slow economic growth, rather than the supposedly low degree of labor market flexibility explain high (youth) unemployment. Important reforms of several tiles of the Italian SWT regime -the Jobs Act, important fiscal incentives to hiring youth long term unemployed, the so-called Good School and the related introduction of work-related learning, the European Youth Guarantee and the reform of employment services -have been all recently implemented, which are causing a slow convergence towards the so-called European social model, but it is still too early to draw conclusions as to the impact of such reforms on youth labor market outcomes. Terms of use: Documents inJEL classification: H52; I2; I24; J13; J24.

Stuck at a crossroads? The duration of the Italian school-to-work transition

“…Furthermore, many students do not attend the courses and the programmes for many exams are too wide, especially for the so-called rock exams, which are almost impossible to pass due to, among other reasons, the teaching load in excess of that provided by the relevant training credits (Pastore, 2019). In this paper, we focus only on the time from the end of studies to the attainment of a stable job, since, unfortunately, information on education is not sufficiently detailed in the EU-SILC data bank.…”

“…Our analysis integrates and develops the analysis of the Italian STWT regime, which has already been characterized as essentially extremely slow (Pastore, 2019). We contribute to the analysis of the Italian model by providing new and detailed evidence and by looking at the specific determinants at an individual and macroeconomic level.…”

“…The consequences of this fact are dramatic in several respects. In the UK, on average, a young person graduates at about 21 years of age and finds a regular job at 21.5 years.At 32-33 years of age, the UK contemporary of a young Italian has already acquired 10 years of work experience and her/his overall human capital is clearly superior to that of an Italian of the same age (for more discussion on this, seePastore, 2019).…”

Why is youth unemployment so high and different across countries?

“…These SWT regimes overlap with the identification of welfare FRANCESCO PASTORE | Why is youth unemployment so high and different across countries? state regimes-social democratic, conservative, liberal-with the addition of the so-called Latin Rim (southern European countries) [4], and former socialist countries.…”

Improving work-based learning in schools

“…Survey evidence from the United Kingdom shows that two-thirds of teachers and secondary school students in England agreed that short work experience placements helped in career decision-making and navigation (Mann and Dawkins, 2014 [32]). The EU Partnership-Project on Work-based Learning and Teaching (2015 [33]) surveyed teachers in nine European Union countries and found that in some countries, students said they appreciated WBL not only as a means of gaining skills but also as a mechanism to ensure that they were making well informed decisions. However, students often expressed the wish that learning at schools and in the workplace were better aligned.…”