Abstract:
We evaluate the impact of vocational education and training (VET) in a setting with high dropout rates and socio-economic inequality in educational attainment. We estimate that the introduction of VET courses across public upper secondary schools in Portugal was associated with a 2.7 percentage points increase in on-time graduation rates (6% of the baseline rate). Our identification strategy exploits the staggered introduction of the VET track, which created quasi-experimental variation in the local availability of VET across school districts and cohorts. Drawing on a comprehensive student-school matched panel spanning 2006-2017, we implement an event-study design and three complementary IV strategies. We find substantial positive effects of VET take-up on graduation rates, especially among previously low-achieving and socio-economically disadvantaged students.
