Societies want to know what are achievements of students educated in various educational systems. Also preparation of students to life in democratic societies is the subject of international survey comparisons. One assessment of effects of citizenship education was carried out in 1999, next will be done in 2009. In 1999 our 14 years old teenagers turned out to be very successful in tests of citizenship knowledge and very distinct in comparisons of attitudes toward public affairs. By no means Polish youth deserves the “zero tolerance program”. Review of 1999 results will enable researchers to see trends, because the next measurement of the same traits is processed.

In Poland during the communist period of time, vocational education constituted the most developed segment of the educational system. Limiting of the number of vocational schools, in particular, basic vocational schools (ZSZ), took place after 1990, in the transformation period. The period of the education reform of 1999 was particularly disadvantageous for them. Young people tended to select other schools, many ZSZ were liquidated. At present, due to the increased demand for qualified blue collar workers, their attractiveness is growing again. Unfortunately, many essential changes in the curricula of these schools have not been introduced, especially when it comes to the internship conditions, which are of key importance for education of this type.

The current research interest in the problem of underemployment is associated with recent changes on the labor market, in particular, the growth in the so-called alternative or flexible employment relations. Today, determining whether and under what conditions a growth in the proportion of workers employed on the basis of atypical contracts results in a deterioration of work conditions poses an important (also from a practical point of view) question for labor market studies. Since the current controversion surrounding this issue can be attributed to the vagueness of the term underemployment, the first part of this article presents and analyses different ways in which this term is defined in the labor market literature. The second part analyses the relationships between underemployment and flexible employment. In the third part, I present the results of statistical analyses of data from Polish survey research. The object of these analyses was to determine the extent to which young people (under 30 years of age) in Poland are affected by underemoyment.

Difficult situation of young people on the labour market has been one of the major social problems which our country has to face for quite a long time. The rate of unemployment among young people is permanently high and high percentage of young people in the whole population of the unemployed is characteristic for Poland. From this point of view it is particularly important to understand how the young people perceive labour market and how they estimate possibility of success. The survey “Young people on the labour market – Secondary school graduates opinions” conducted in 2007 by University of Information Technology and Management in Rzeszow tried to answer this question. This article presents the results of the survey.