Despite its prominent place in school policy, there has been little rigorous evaluation of vocational school efforts. Much more work has been undertaken on financing, arguing that general skills are a public priority while specific vocational skills should be privately financed or financed by employers (Becker 1964). Even more work has gone into estimating wage effects or returns to schooling for vocational tracks and comparing them to general or academic tracks. Overall, cost-benefit studies show that returns are lower and costs higher (Psacharopoulos and Patrinos 2004).

A small empirical literature does suggest that that there are advantages of targeted vocational _training_ – that is not school based – programs (Karlan and Valdivia 2006). Evaluations from the randomized training programs in the United States show modest effects, at best (see, for example, Heckman, Lalonde and Smith 1999). Evidence on the effectiveness of training in developing countries is more limited. Betcherman, Olivas and Dar (2004) review 69 impact evaluations of unemployed and youth training programs, only 19 of which are in developing countries. They find that the impacts in developing countries are more positive than the impacts of programs in the United States and Europe. Most of those programs, however, are not experimental. Card et al. (2007) report on the first randomized evaluation of a job training program in Latin America. The subsidized program in the Dominican Republic showed no impact on employment, a marginally significant impact on hourly wages and on the probability of health insurance coverage, conditional on employment. Attanasio, Kugler and Meghir (2009) evaluate the impact of a randomized training program for disadvantaged youth in Colombia on employment and earnings outcomes. They find that the program raises earnings and employment for both men and women, with larger effects on women. Cost-benefit analysis of these results suggests that the program generates a large net gain, especially for women.

Fewer evaluations – randomized or otherwise – have been undertaken on the impacts of vocational education. Earlier assessments of vocational education programs in a number of countries (for example, Colombia and Tanzania) have shown that most graduates of such schools go to university rather than entering manual occupations (Psacharopoulos and Loxley 1985). In 1991, the upper secondary school two-year vocational programs were transformed into threeyear programs as a pilot before the reform was implemented all over the country in 1995. This “natural experiment” was evaluated in terms of years of upper secondary education, university enrolment, and the rate of inactivity. Results suggest positive effects on years of upper secondary education for those who lived in a pilot municipality in 1990. One of the important changes was that the third year in upper secondary vocational education gave individuals general eligibility to continue to higher education. However, the third year did not have a statistically significant effect on the probability to continue to higher education, at least not within six years after completing upper secondary education (Ekström 2002). No rigorous study, to our knowledge, has been undertaken on the learning outcomes associated with vocational secondary schooling.

Poland is a good case for such an evaluation. In 1999, Poland reformed its basic education system in order to raise the level of education in society, increase educational opportunities, and improve the quality of education. The new government at that time restructured basic education by converting the old 8-year primary school that was followed by early vocational tracking, into a 6-year primary education followed by three years of lower 2