The Effectiveness Of Vocational Versus General Secondary Education: Evidence From Pisa 2012 For Countries With Early Trackin

In this paper, we examine the relative academic effectiveness of vocational education in three countries with early tracking systems: Austria, Croatia and Hungary. Our measures of academic effectiveness are the results of an international test, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s (OECD’s) Program of International Student Assessment (PISA). Our results show few, if any, differences between students attending the vocational track in secondary school and those in the academic track. Specifically, the results show that attending the vocational or academic track results in similar achievement gains in the 10th grade