The impact of changes in the education system on the educational and employment opportunities of young people living in deprived rural areas

Abstract

In the early 2000s, Éva G. Fekete and myself collaborated on the research project, which titled ‘Tackling long-term unemployment in rural spaces’ that introduced a novel approach within the field. In the first section of this paper, I analyse current labour market processes of backward rural spaces along the key dimensions we had identified in that project. In the following part, I focus on rearrangements of the education system that had transformative impact on the skills andlabour market position of young people living in such spaces.

Thematically, this paper relies on the joint paper we had published together with Éva G.Fekete in 2002. This can be explained by the fact that public data related to politically sensitiveissues (unemployment, quality of education services, institutional segregation, etc.) had to be scrutinized in both periods. Nowadays, like in the early 2000s, we must go beyond statistics andrely on informal information to understand real-world processes.

Analysis in this paper rests on public data about unemployment, such as labour marketsurveys of the Central Statistical Office and statistics on public works published by the Ministry of Interior. Data on education was obtained from KIRSTAT, reviews ‘Indicators in public education’ official databases of national competence surveys and series of field work done in the last few years.

The analysis suggests that the marginal labour market position of young people who havelow education skills, come from low-income families and live in declining rural spaces has scarcely improved since 2002; they are still in danger of exclusion. Long-term unemployment and public work programs (a sole source for legal, though temporary income) reproduce destructive mechanisms such as personal dependencies, disintegration of communities, and life without perspectives. The only way to break this vicious circle is to advance personal skills, which can only be achieved by improving the quality of education services and by making them accessible to all.

Nevertheless, current institutional reforms entail a highly uneven system in primary education bifurcated by social structure and by student performance. Institutional inequalities reflect upon the hierarchical-administrative organisation of settlements and also on the spatial distribution of low income social groups. Centralisation processes of the last two decades favoured major urban centres with diverse education institutions (i.e. grammar schools) of high reputation and centres of vocational training with ample resources, such as infrastructure, business relations and skilled staff. Such processes marginalized those who cannot finance commuting, whose integration into broader communities is dificult, and for whom the quality of education is of less importance. As a consequence, students who are trapped in the institutions of small towns with low-quality training reproduce the social status of their parents, with no chance for upward mobility. Thus, public secondary education does not fulfil its mission on social equity, rather in its current form it is biased to reproduce socio-spatial inequalities.