Drawing on the database, we have analysed the social background and gender divides among VET students in Catalonia.
In Spain, schools oversee upper secondary and tertiary-level VET programmes, while public employment services deliver short-term courses, training for specific professional qualification and prior- learning recognition services. The number of students in these programmes has boosted in the last decade, particularly in Catalonia (tell the percentage increase).
On these grounds, we conducted a series of statistical analysis combining both registry data and VET graduate follow-up survey. This exercise produced two telling findings.
- The socio-economic background of students makes a big difference.
- Students coming for more affluent neighbourhoods are more likely to enrol in tertiary-level programmes, earn a higher wage after graduation and find a job that is related to their studies.
- Therefore, this expanded system has reproduced a social stratified VET in a similar way as apprenticeship schemes have done in German-speaking countries, and comprehensive education and training systems have done in Nordic countries.
- Furthermore, gender is an additional layer of differentiation of VET graduates’ labour market outcomes.
- Insofar as schools have gathered men and women for decades, and the school curriculum has been inspired on the gender perspective since the nineties, it was plausible to expect a certain degree of equality among the growing intakes of VET programmes.
Despite these favourable conditions, most students in specific sectors such as beauty, health and socio-communitarian services are women, while the share of male students approaches 100% in IT and industrial programmes. To the extent that the economic opportunities of these specialisms differ, gender also impinges on the wage and job relevance of women after graduation. Moreover, women’s wage and job relevance are even worse for graduates in the specialisms where they are a majority.
The presentation of these findings to the stakeholders of ERASMUS KA2 AIVET project in Catalonia has triggered a conversation about the causes and the possible solutions of this bias.
By Xavier Rambla, Rosario Scandurra and Andreu Arcas