Study: state pays for people with ‘unfinished’ education

Secondary-school graduates in the Czech Republic earn about one third more during their lifetimes than do graduates of vocational schools and about 60 percent more than people with basic education, suggests a new study carried out by the Czech Republic’s Agency for Social Inclusion, quoted by the daily Mladá Fronta dnes.

Photo: Filip Jandourek / Czech Radio

According to the study, the government loses around 22 million crowns on each secondary student who drops out of school. Every vocational-school student who doesn’t finish his or her education costs the state around 13 million crowns.

Education also has a significant impact on the length of unemployment. People with basic education are unemployed for an average of 12 years in total, graduates of vocational schools for over three and a half years, and people with secondary education for two and a half years. “Even though people who complete their education early technically spend the longest time at work (around 50 years), when we take into account unemployment, they work for an average of 38 years, which is the shortest period of time.

“People with university education enter the labour market 10 years later, but they are economically active for an average of 40 years, because of low unemployment,” says the author of the study, Tomáš Matoušek.

According to the study, two thirds of students who leave school prematurely come from socially excluded localities, mainly from Romani communities. Every year, there are around 1,500 children in the Czech Republic born into poverty.