An article examined the literacy of the adolescents in European countries at the point of leaving basic education. It looked at the most persistent inequities, including the gender gap, the socio-economic gap, the migrant gap, and the digital gap.
Source: Sari Sulkunen, 'Adolescent literacy in Europe – an urgent call for action', European Journal of Education, Volume 48 Issue 4
Links: Abstract
Date: 2013-Dec
A report examined the extent, methods, and benefits of schools' engagement with youth workers. It described a variety of approaches and barriers to success. Recommendations included: for national government to review the youth sector workforce; for local authorities to look at distinct funding streams for youth work; for schools to recognize the general value and impact of youth work alongside formal education; for the youth work sector to evidence and articulate better the impact of their work; and for youth work to be recognized by the schools inspectorate.
Source: National Youth Agency Commission into the Role of Youth Work in Formal Education, National Youth Agency
Links: Report | NYA press release
Date: 2013-Oct
An article examined the effect of neighbourhood composition on teenagers' educational and behavioural outcomes in England. Changes in neighbourhood composition were found to have no effects on test scores but some effects on behavioural outcomes, which were heterogeneous for boys and girls.
Source: Stephen Gibbons, Olmo Silv, and Felix Weinhardt, 'Everybody needs good neighbours? Evidence from students' outcomes in England', Economic Journal, Volume 123 Number 571
Links: Abstract
Date: 2013-Sep
A report said that England should expand the provision of post-secondary vocational training in order to meet the changing needs of students and employers. Although England had a large and successful university system offering three-year bachelor degrees, too few people were pursuing shorter (one to two years) vocational programmes at the post-secondary level that would give people the skills many employers were seeking.
Source: Pauline Musset and Simon Field, A Skills Beyond School Review of England, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
Links: Report | OECD press release
Date: 2013-Sep
A paper examined the relationship between labour market conditions and schooling decisions in Italy, Germany, and the United Kingdom. Labour market conditions significantly influenced the choice of post-compulsory secondary education in Italy and the United Kingdom: but responses to such incentives were heterogeneous with respect to housing tenure. In Germany, labour markets did not affect the choice of the secondary school track, whereas they had a significant impact on the transition to tertiary education.
Source: Alberto Tumino, The Effect of Local Labour Market Conditions on Educational Choices: A cross country comparison, ImPRovE Discussion Paper 13/06, Centre for Social Policy (Antwerp University)
Links: Paper
Date: 2013-Sep
The inspectorate for education and children's services said that the arrangements for careers guidance in schools were not working well enough. Three-quarters of the schools visited were not implementing their duty to provide impartial careers advice effectively. Guidance for schools on careers advice was not explicit, the National Careers Service was not promoted well enough, and there was a lack of employer engagement in schools.
Source: Going in the Right Direction? Careers guidance in schools from September 2012, HMI 130114, Office for Standards in Education, Children's Services and Skills
Links: Report | OFSTED press release | DE press release | NAHT press release | NUT press release | YMCA press release | Guardian report | Telegraph report
Date: 2013-Sep
A survey found that young people who left school with few qualifications were more likely to scale down their aspirations for the future. Over 1 in 3 young people (34 per cent) leaving school with fewer than five GCSEs graded A-C believed that they would end up on benefits for at least part of their lives. Young people with few qualifications were also almost twice as likely as their peers to believe that they would 'never amount to anything'.
Source: Abandoned Ambitions? The need to support struggling school leavers, Prince's Trust
Links: Report | Princes Trust press release | Action for Children press release | YoungMinds press release | BBC report | Telegraph report
Notes: GCSE = General Certificate of Secondary Education.
Date: 2013-Aug
Two articles examined policy responses to early school leaving in European countries.
Source: Alistair Ross and Carole Leathwood, 'Problematising early school leaving', European Journal of Education, Volume 48 Issue 3 | Kristof De Witte, Ides Nicaise, Jeroen Lavrijsen, Georges Van Landeghem, Carl Lamote, and Jan Van Damme, 'The impact of institutional context, education and labour market policies on early school leaving: a comparative analysis of EU countries', European Journal of Education, Volume 48 Issue 3
Links: Abstract (1) | Abstract (2)
Date: 2013-Aug
An article examined why employers became involved with work-related learning in the 14-19 curriculum in England, the mechanisms by which engagement took place, and the opportunities and challenges faced by employers and by those who sought to engage them. Employers who had become involved in providing work-related learning for diplomas could identify a range of benefits to their organizations: but policy levers and drivers designed to engage employers needed to acknowledge that employers did not form a homogeneous group.
Source: Gill Haynes, Pauline Wade, and Sarah Lynch, 'Engaging employers with the 14-19 diplomas: the employer perspective', Journal of Education and Work, Volume 26 Number 2
Links: Abstract
Date: 2013-Jul
The coalition government published its response to a consultation on vocational qualifications for young people aged 16-19. It confirmed that only those qualifications endorsed by employers would be included in new performance tables for schools and colleges from 2016.
Source: Consultation on the Reform of Level 3 Vocational Qualifications for 16-19 Year Olds: Government Response, Department for Education
Links: Response to consultation | DE press release | AOC press release | CBI press release | NUT press release | 157 Group press release | Voice blog post
Notes: Consultation document (March 2013)
Date: 2013-Jul
A think-tank report examined the socio-economic, demographic, and parental drivers of young people's financial concerns about going to university, as well those factors that supported them to decide in favour of participating in higher education. A linked discussion paper considered the potential for using alternative criteria besides household income for targeting financial support, and reviewed the importance of parental factors in shaping young people's financial concerns: it identified the need for more research on subjective influences on the perceived rewards to investment in higher education.
Source: Andy Ross and James Lloyd, Access for All: An investigation of young people s attitudes to the cost of higher education using the Longitudinal Study of Young People in England, Strategic Society Centre | James Lloyd, Achieving Access for All, Strategic Society Centre
Links: Report | Discussion paper | OFFA press release | Times Higher Education report
Date: 2013-Jul
A report said that the jobs gap in developed (OECD) countries between well educated young people and those who had left school early had continued to widen during the global economic crisis. Unemployment rates were nearly three times higher among people without an upper secondary education (13 per cent on average) than among those who had a tertiary education (5 per cent). It said that too many youngsters in the United Kingdom dropped out of education and were left without skills needed to get jobs: the UK had one of the lowest percentages of young people aged 16-19 in education among OECD countries. In 2011, young people aged 15-29 in the UK spent on average 2.3 years unemployed, compared with 1.7 years in Germany and 1.1 years in the Netherlands. Almost one-quarter of those in the UK who failed to achieve basic secondary qualifications ended up in the so-called 'Neet' category – not in education, employment or training.
Source: Education at a Glance 2013, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
Links: Report | OECD press release | ATL press release | CBI press release | Labour Party press release | NUT press release | Russell Group press release | UCU press release | Universities UK press release | BBC report | Daily Mail report | Guardian report (1) | Guardian report (2)
Date: 2013-Jun
A report presented the findings of the first year of an independent evaluation of the 16-19 Bursary Fund. Just two-thirds of providers (68 per cent) thought that the Bursary Fund was effective in targeting young people with the greatest barriers to participation in education or training.
Source: Meg Callanan, Julia Griggs, Cheryl Lloyd, Sarah Kitchen, and Ivonne Wollny, Evaluation of the 16-19 Bursary Fund: Year 1 Report, Research Report 265, Department for Education
Links: Report | Brief | DE press release
Notes: The 16-19 Bursary Fund (introduced in September 2011) provides financial support to young people who face significant financial barriers to participation in education or training post 16. It replaced the former education maintenance allowance.
Date: 2013-May
A think-tank report examined the effects of league table-based school accountability on the provision of high-quality vocational education in England. It said that a recent change to the way school performance was measured meant that most vocational qualifications would no longer count towards a school's league table score: the effect of this was likely to be a rapid decline in the provision of vocational education for the 14-16 age group. In other countries with successful vocational education systems, there was a completely different relationship between school accountability and vocational provision. School accountability was arguably more rigorous in some of these countries: but in most cases it was decoupled from the school-leaving exams and, by extension, the curriculum content in the latter stages of secondary school. Strengthening the vocational education system would entail shifting away from an accountability system focused on a leaving certificate at age 16, and increasing and expanding programmes of vocational study and post-school institutions.
Source: Will Cook, Vocational Education in English Schools: Protecting options for pre-16 pupils, Institute for Public Policy Research
Links: Report | Summary | NUT press release
Date: 2013-May
The government responded to a report by a committee of MPs on careers advice provision for young people. It rejected suggestions that there had been a reduction in the overall level of careers provision, and said the committee had chosen not to highlight examples of excellent practice. More time was needed to allow new arrangements time to evolve before drawing firm conclusions.
Source: Careers Guidance for Young People: The impact of the new duty on schools – Government Response to the Committee's Seventh Report, Sixth Special Report (Session 2012-13), HC 1078, House of Commons Education Select Committee, TSO
Links: Response
Notes: MPs report (January 2013)
Date: 2013-Apr
An article examined the ways in which young people had been 'constructed' within the coalition government's education policy, and the extent of continuity or change compared with previous governments. Although some constructions of young people could be seen primarily as an extension of New Labour understandings, others should be more accurately viewed as reconfigurations or, in some cases, new understandings.
Source: Rachel Brooks, 'The social construction of young people within education policy: evidence from the UK's coalition government', Journal of Youth Studies, Volume 16 Number 3
Links: Abstract
Date: 2013-Apr
The coalition government announced plans for a 'technical baccalaureate' for young people in England aged 16-19. The baccalaureate would be a performance measure showing young people's abilities in maths, literacy, and a high-level vocational qualification.
Source: Written Ministerial Statement 22 April 2013, columns 41-46WS, House of Commons Hansard, TSO
Links: Hansard | DE press release | AOC press release | ASCL press release | ATL press release | Labour Party press release | NUT press release | 157 Group press release | BBC report | Guardian report
Date: 2013-Apr
A report highlighted the essential role of good quality, independent information, advice, and guidance in supporting young people to identify and access appropriate education and training. When this was coupled with support for securing childcare or financial support, negative experiences of schooling could be overcome, opening the way for people to continue to engage in learning throughout their adult lives.
Source: Motivation and Barriers to Learning for Young People not in Education, Employment or Training, Research Report 87, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills
Links: Report | ATL press release | NIACE press release
Date: 2013-Feb
A report examined how effective training programmes were in raising the qualifications and skills of people who were out of work. It specifically looked at programmes targeted at young people who were not in learning or work and who had low or no skills. It considered what lessons could be learned from previous programmes, and made recommendations on designing future training programmes for low-skilled and out-of-work young people aged 19–24.
Source: Tony Wilson, Youth Unemployment: Review of training for young people with low qualifications, Research Report 101, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills
Links: Report
Date: 2013-Feb
A new book examined the employment difficulties facing young people. Rather than helping young people 'move up', inflated educational qualifications were now essential to avoid downward social mobility. It was the absence of work, particularly the disappearance of specific 'youth jobs', that had been the reason for young people staying in full-time education for longer, not because most employment had became generally more demanding – in fact, the opposite was the case. Despite this, many educationalists continued to assume that the more qualifications possessed by the population, the greater the national economic benefit.
Source: Martin Allen and Patrick Ainley, The Great Reversal: Young people, education and employment in a declining economy, Radicaled
Links: Summary
Date: 2013-Feb
A report by a committee of MPs identified a 'worrying deterioration' in the level of careers advice provision for young people. It highlighted concerns about the quality, independence, impartiality, and availability of careers guidance.
Source: Careers Guidance for Young People: The impact of the new duty on schools, Seventh Report (Session 2012–13), HC 632, House of Commons Education Select Committee, TSO
Links: Report | Oral and written evidence | Additional written evidence | ALP press release | AOC press release | ASCL press release | ATL press release | Centrepoint press release | Labour Party press release | NAHT press release | NASUWT press release | NUT press release | UCU press release | BBC report | Guardian report | Public Finance report | Telegraph report
Date: 2013-Jan
