Unpacking returns to vocational education in England: the role of skills, labour market sorting and mobility

解析英国职业教育的回报：技能、劳动力市场分类和流动性的作用

• 批准号: ES/Z502534/1
• 金额: $ 15.02万
• 依托单位: London School of Economics and Political Science
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Fellowship
• 财政年份: 2024
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2024 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=ES%2FZ502534%2F1
• 关键词: Unpacking; returns; vocational; education; England

In the UK, widespread participation in postsecondary education goes hand in hand with a relatively high number of students leaving education prematurely, ill-equipped for the labour market. This growing polarization has revived policymakers' interest in strengthening the role of vocational education as a way of improving students' labour market prospects while also relieving skills shortages across the economy.Yet, evidence on the economic benefits of vocational education is mixed and varies depending on the alternative it is compared to. Accounting for differences in students' ability and social background, recent evidence from England by Matthewes and Ventura (2022) finds significant earnings losses for students who opt for vocational rather than academic education, with some tentative evidence that vocational education may benefit those who would instead drop out of education at the age of 16. However, due to data limitations, we still know frustratingly little of why returns to vocational education in England are lower than in other countries and whether or how this could be improved.To answer this question, I set out to use newly available information from the Longitudinal Education Outcomes (LEO) data linked to Inter Departmental Business Register (IDBR) to study what factors drive the relationship between students' education and labour market outcomes in England, focusing on the role of skills, labour market sorting and job mobility. Focusing separately on vocational students who would have either followed an academic route or dropped out of education at age 16, I will consider the type of skills students acquire and how these determine the type of sector and firm they are employed in, as well as their ability to change job and progress in their careers.The study will be articulated in three interdependent research objectives: the first objective will provide a descriptive overview of labour market trajectories by education, decomposing earnings growth into separate between- and within-job components before exploring the role of selective sorting across sectors and firms. The second objective will study the effect of enrolling in vocational education on skills, sector of employment and mobility for students whose alternative is academic education, using students' distance to post-16 education institutions as an independent source of variation in their education choices. Finally, under the third objective, I will consider whether the 2013 increase in education participation age to 17 prodded students into vocational courses and whether this led them to acquire more technical or social skills, allowing them to find employment in better-paid sectors or firms.Overall, my proposed research has the ambition to improve our still imperfect understanding of the economic returns to vocational education by combining novel and rigorous empirical evidence from England with an emphasis on the interaction between skills and labour market structures. In so doing, the research will get to the heart of the ongoing debate on education policy in the UK, shedding light on the country's skills strategy. This research will inform British policymakers reform efforts, ensuring the post-16 education offer is well-aligned with the skills needed to succeed in the UK labour market of the 21st century, thus benefiting future generations of students and workers.

在英国，高等教育的广泛参与与相对较多的学生过早离开教育、缺乏进入劳动力市场的能力密切相关。这种日益严重的两极分化重新激起了政策制定者的兴趣，即加强职业教育的作用，以此改善学生的劳动力市场前景，同时缓解整个经济中的技能短缺问题。然而，关于职业教育经济效益的证据是好坏参半的，并且因不同国家而异。与之比较的替代方案。考虑到学生能力和社会背景的差异，Matthewes 和 Ventura (2022) 最近在英格兰提供的证据发现，选择职业教育而不是学术教育的学生收入会遭受重大损失，一些初步证据表明职业教育可能会使那些选择职业教育的学生受益16岁就辍学了。然而，由于数据的限制，我们仍然对为什么英国职业教育的回报低于其他国家以及是否或如何改善这一问题知之甚少。要回答这个问题，我设定利用与部门间商业注册 (IDBR) 相关联的纵向教育成果 (LEO) 数据中的最新信息来研究哪些因素驱动英格兰学生教育与劳动力市场成果之间的关系，重点关注技能、劳动力的作用市场排序和工作流动。我将分别关注那些要么走学术路线要么在 16 岁时辍学的职业学生，我将考虑学生获得的技能类型，以及这些技能如何决定他们受雇的部门和公司的类型，以及他们的职业生涯。该研究将阐明三个相互依赖的研究目标：第一个目标将通过教育对劳动力市场轨迹进行描述性概述，在探索之前将收入增长分解为单独的工作间和工作内组成部分的作用跨部门和公司的选择性排序。第二个目标将研究参加职业教育对选择学术教育的学生的技能、就业部门和流动性的影响，利用学生与 16 岁以后教育机构的距离作为其教育选择变化的独立来源。最后，在第三个目标下，我将考虑2013年将教育参与年龄提高到17岁是否会促使学生学习职业课程，以及这是否会导致他们获得更多技术或社交技能，从而使他们能够在收入更高的行业或公司找到工作总的来说，我提出的研究旨在通过结合来自英国的新颖而严格的经验证据，重点关注技能与劳动力市场结构之间的相互作用，来改善我们对职业教育经济回报仍然不完善的理解。通过这样做，这项研究将触及英国教育政策正在进行的辩论的核心，为该国的技能战略提供线索。这项研究将为英国政策制定者的改革工作提供信息，确保 16 岁以后的教育提供与在 21 世纪英国劳动力市场取得成功所需的技能保持一致，从而造福子孙后代的学生和工人。