Improving Transition from School to Active Life: What Contribution of the European Social Funds

The paper objective is to assess the impact of the ESF additional funding for transition from school to work schemes. The paper will explore, in particular, the added value of the European Social Fund in funding students’ internships in Romania in terms of number of students benefiting of transition from school to active life schemes, students’ expected benefits and labor market insertion. The paper is based on the assumption that internships are significantly improving students’ learning outcomes considering that internships give to the students the opportunity to see through personal learning experience and they are means of gaining a competitive edge in the marketplace and a viable tool in obtaining the first job. Based on this, it is expected that additional funding to support students internships should lead to increased recent graduates insertion rates and shorter period for their first job. Under 2007-2013, about 0.3 bill Euro were allocated to support transition from school to active life projects of which benefited over 260,000 persons. Since official data about the labor market insertion of the ESF support beneficiaries are not available, it is limiting the in depth analysis of the effectiveness of the ESF support to specific cases.