Effective transition to the labour market means successful and satisfactory one. Getting a full time job or self employment after graduation is a successful transition, the better the time for seeking the job or opening own business is shorter. The best if it is just after graduation with no unemployment period
sandwiched between It is measured by statistics and benchmarks on local regional, country, European and World levels.
Young people make up nearly half of the ranks of the world‘s unemployed, and, for example, that the Middle East and North Africa region alone must create 100 million jobs by 2020 in order to stabilize its employment situation. In addition, more than 20 percent of fi rms in countries such as Algeria, Bangladesh, Brazil, China, Estonia, and Zambia, rate poor education and work skills among their workforce as “a major or severe obstacle to their operations.” (World Development Report 2007).
In Europe, the Council Conclusion of May 2007 adopted educational attainment of the population as one of sixteen core indicators for measuring progress on education and training systems. The Commission emphasized the core indicator for monitoring progress towards the knowledge-based economy as the share of the population with high educational attainment. It presents the educational characteristics of the supply side of the labour market that is the share of high skilled workers in the labour force, which plays an important role in relation to economic growth.
The main characteristic of educational attainment of the population in Member States is that young people with higher levels of formal educational qualifi cations enter the labour force, while older generations with lower levels gradually leave.
This generational effect becomes more visible year by year (Noworol, 2010).
The demand for higher competences will be continuously rising in most occupations including furthermore uncomplicated elementary jobs, by the ongoing grow of the service sector and sweeping technological and organisational changes.
Figure 1. Employment shares by education attainment level in the years 1996-2020. Source: Cedefop (2008), EU27.
Based on the Cedefop projections, in 2015 around 30% of all jobs will need high qualifi cations whereas almost 50% will require medium qualifi cations, including vocational qualifi cations. Jobs requiring only low level qualifi cations will have decreased from over a 30% in 1996 to around 20% of the working age population in 2015 (Figure 1.). It is expected that this will increase the pressure on the tertiary as well as upper and postsecondary levels of education to improve the quality and access to the Lifelong Guidance (Noworol, 2010) service provision at these levels of education in the broad sense including dropouts, disadvantaged, disabled, at risk and graduates. This is still far from being the case and efforts have to be reinforced in this area. Overcoming this should start with more and better investments in youth.
In order to guide progress on the Education and Training 2010 Work Programme, the Council introduced an indicator for tertiary graduates in Mathematics, Science and Technology (MST) and adopted in May 2003 fi ve benchmarks to be achieved by 2010, and in May 2009, fi ve benchmarks for 2020 (Table 1.).
There is visible in the Table 1. that almost all benchmarks for both the 2010 and the 2020 are to greater or less extend related to the transition from the World of Education to the World of Work. The only exception is the fi rst one for 2020. However, some people believe that transition can start in early childhood education for it cause primary schooling to be successful. Secondary education and skill acquisition make sense only if primary schooling has been successful, and so on.
The benchmarks 2020 stress a larger share of population in educational attainment starting from early childhood to tertiary education and interminable to lifelong learning. In particular, there is clearly indicated in the benchmark concerning early school leavers. The benchmark was totally not reached by 2010, and even though the condition for 2020 is more stringent.
Table 1. The 5 benchmarks to be achieved by 2010 and by 2020.
Benchmarks to be achieved by 2010 Benchmarks to be achieved by 2020 1. No more than 10% early school
leavers;
1. At least 95% of children between 4 years old and the age for starting compulsory primary education should participate in early childhood education;
2. Decrease of at least 20% in the percentage of low-achieving pupils in reading literacy;
2. The share of early leavers from education and training should be less than 10%;
3. At least 85% of young people should have completed upper secondary education;
3. The share of low-achieving 15-years olds in reading, mathematics and science should be less than 15%;
4. Increase of at least 15% in the number of tertiary graduates in MST, with a simultaneous decrease in the gender imbalance;
4. The share of 30-34 year olds with tertiary educational attainment should be at least 40%;
5. At least 12.5% of the adult
population should participate in lifelong learning. 5. An average of at least 15% of adults should participate in lifelong learning.
The second dimension of effective transition deals with satisfaction of young people starting full time employment or self-employment. It is not visible in statistics and benchmarks, neither in appraisals using adequate method of portfolios to gauge a student’s employability. Over 90% of youth should graduate various schools at lower and upper secondary level before entering the labour market (Table1, benchmark 2020, 2.). All of them have a chance for successful transition, but how many will do? What is more, how many of them are satisfi ed from the school they have been chosen and how many will be satisfi ed with the further study direction or work they will start or fi rst steps in entrepreneurship, developing own business? Questions of the same or alike meaning can be applied to at least 40% of tertiary graduates of 30-34 year olds (Table1, benchmark 2020, 4.) and at least 15% of adults participating in lifelong learning (Table1, benchmark 2020, 5.).
The International Labour Offi ce defi nes satisfactory employment as a subjective concept, based on the self assessment of the jobholder and pays attention to join transition with it (Matsumoto, Elder, 2010). Even though, they do not claim that explicitly there is likely to argue straightforward what are the conditions of completed youth transition to the working life.
The satisfactory dimension of effective transition means employment or self employment, which:
• is stable work engagement;
• gives the worker feeling of personal satisfaction;
• benefi ts the youth on a higher level;
• uses his/her talents, abilities and qualifi cations;
• raises youth’ self-esteem;
• adds values to a desired career path;
• supports self development;
• provides an opportunity for social integration;
• allows to have reasonable earnings;
• provide the worker with a sense of security employment;