To prepare for virtual mobility (C3) we wanted to find out if our schoolmates do any paid work and how they deal with it. Therefore we surveyed our schoolmates and here is what we have found out.

First we asked for basic facts. We found out that 63.5% of our schoolmates get pocket money from their parents, 31% of our mates work during school year and almost 60%  work during holiday. As we can see a lot more students work during holiday than during school year.

The students who work during school year mainly work at weekends - 62.3% And they usually work between 1 and 5 hours a week - 60.6% and between 6 and 10 hours -39.4%. We see that almost all of them work no more than 10 hours a week.

The biggest proportion of the students who work during holidays work for 41 days or more - 43.2%,  for between 21 and 30 days - 24.5%, and for between 31 and 40 days - 15.5%. As we can see, over 80% of the students who work during holiday devote a month or more for that.

The most popular jobs among our schoolmates are: working in a shop, restaurant or cafe jobs, helping with a family business, babysitting and cleaning.

It was interesting to find out if paid employment has a bad influence on students’ grades. What we found out was that not necessarily. Only about 6% of working students have some fail grades, while 35.5% of them have good and 37.2% very good grades.

The most popular reasons why our schoolmates took paid employment is financial independence, but students also work to develop their skills, improve their CVs and help their parents.

We also asked our mates how they spend the money they earn. It turned out that they most often spend it on shopping, a lot of students save the money, some spend it on socialising, but also on hobbies and travelling.

In summary, about one third of our mates work during school year and they mostly work at weekends and a majority of them work no more than 10 hours a week.Two thirds of our mates work during holidays and they usually devote at least a month for that. Our mates don't seem to have a problem with combining paid employment with schoolwork, as about 73% of them have good or very good grades.