OECD Economics Department Working Papers, No. 495 The paper discusses the returns to education and provides an overview of the structure of the education system in Poland; it then discusses its organisation and performance, taking the different levels of education and training in turn.
An effective system of education and training is important for both social and economic reasons. Its role in the Polish economy is to provide the current and future labour force with skills to facilitate both continuing productivity growth and reallocation of resources as structural adjustment proceeds. Important reforms to decentralise primary and secondary education in the late 1990s are now reaching maturity, as cohort sizes decline steeply. These reforms and PISA results have focused attention on quality control and the place of vocational education. Both are important in the tertiary sector, too, which has seen a four-fold expansion in 15 years, mushrooming of private-sector provision and questions on the appropriate balance of public and private funding. Participation in adult training is low too and, as elsewhere, seems to be concentrated among already relatively highly-educated groups but does not seem to be having much impact on improving the human capital of older and less skilled groups. This Working Paper relates to the 2006 OECD Economic Survey of Poland.