Do local characteristics matter? Secondary school track choice in Poland

This paper examines to which extent the school track choice in Poland between vocational and general education can be attributed to variation of personal characteristics and to which extent to variation of the local conditions. We assume that not only a family background, but also local characteristics are important determinants of school track decisions. As we make distinction between three different types of secondary schools: basic vocational, secondary vocational, and general secondary, and we want to examine the county specific characteristics we apply a multilevel method for multinomial logistics regression to address the issue. Our results indicate that both child’s characteristics such as sex and school performance and characteristics of household are related to school track decisions. We also found that there is statistically significant variation in school track choice on the county level. Local unemployment rate is statistically significant determinant of school track decision and it also explains a great variation between counties. This finding is important in the light of EU regional cohesion policy aiming at diminishing regional disparities.