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The focus of this report, which uses longitudinal data to map the dynamics of the youth labour market and to identify factors that are important in securing full-time work, is on the transition to full-time employment of young people who do not go to university. The study reports on the education and labour market activities of a national sample of youth on their leaving school and analyses the influences of social and demographic factors, school and other educational factors, and initial experiences in the labour market on their post-school activity four years after leaving school, focusing on factors influencing being in full-time employment four years after leaving school. The following research and policy issues are addressed: the general youth labour market situation; the influence of social background factors; the effects of education, including school leaving status and vocational education; and the role of prior labour market experiences. The report contains an executive summary, six chapters and five appendices. Following the introduction, chapter two sets the scene for subsequent chapters by presenting and examining the activity profiles of the group of school leavers who did not go to university; chapter three looks at the pathways of young people in the years leaving school to examine the extent of year-to-year movement in and out of activities; chapter four examines the correlates of activities in the first and fourth years after leaving school, investigating social and socioeconomic background, education and training, and labour market experiences; chapter five explores the influences on securing full-time work using a base model comprising factors found in the previous chapter to have significant influence on being in full-time work in the fourth year after leaving school; and the final chapter addresses the policy and research issues. The report does not support ‘crisis’ accounts of the youth labour market and disputes claims that young people who are not fully engaged in full-time work or study are ‘at risk’ of an unsuccessful school-to-work transition. The findings indicate that: 61% of young men and 45% of young women were in full-time employment in the first year after school; by the fourth year, 77% of young men and 64% of young women were working full-time; the effects of post-secondary vocational education other than apprenticeship and traineeship were mixed; full-time study in the first year after leaving school did not increase the odds of being in full-time work in the fourth year; and among those already in full-time work, a TAFE certificate or diploma tended to further increase the chances of staying in full-time work. Show less

There are concerns that a proportion of young people, especially those who do not complete secondary schooling, are at risk of experiencing long periods of unemployment, interspersed with short periods of low skilled, part-time or casual employment in their transition from school to work. This paper looks at the following issues: (1) Who are the early school leavers? (2) What are the reasons given by young people for school non-completion? (3) What are the consequences of school non-completion? Data from the Longitudinal Surveys of Australian Youth (LSAY) project is used and the paper concludes with a brief discussion of areas requiring policy attention.

The volume of conference proceedings is indexed at TD/ERD 87.162. Individual papers presented at the conference are indexed from TD/TNC 68.426 to TD/TNC 68.440. Show less

This report, based upon data from the Longitudinal Surveys of Australian Youth (LSAY) program, examines the process of school leaving and the transition from school to postcompulsory education, training and the labour market. Young people who do not stay on to complete senior secondary school and are perceived as ‘at risk’ of experiencing a problematic transition are a major focus of the study. Three research questions are asked: (1) What are the influences on school non-completion, and have these influences changed over the past two decades? (2) What are the post-school experiences of school non-completers, and how do these differ from young people who complete Year 12? (3) How do sociodemographic and human capital factors influence the labour market activities of young people? The study found that the same sociodemographic factors that influenced school non-completion in the early 1980s were still in operation by the late 1990s. However, the influence of some factors (socioeconomic background for example) declined while representation among non-completers of young people with Australian-born parents and those living in non-metropolitan areas increased. A majority of non-completers reported that they left school for positive, work-related reasons such as getting a job or an apprenticeship. Analysis of the post-school activities of non-completers revealed that approximately half the non-completers were engaged in some form of education or training. Approximately half the non-completers who entered full-time work immediately or soon after leaving school, combined work with education or training. However, non-completers are less likely than completers to engage in postcompulsory education or training, and non-completers experienced less successful transitions than completers. The evidence presented here suggests that females, especially non-completers, face greater difficulties than males in the early post-school years. The report concludes that it is important to ensure that alternative educational and training pathways are available to all groups of young people. Show less

On Track is a Victorian Government initiative which surveys school leavers who have left school in the last six months to find out if they are on track to a bright future. On Track ensures school leavers are contacted within six months of leaving school to see if they are on a path to further education, training or employment. Data presented in this report is based on the On Track telephone survey of 33,250 Year 12 or equivalent completers and 4740 early leavers from the 2007 school year in Victoria. Show less

This paper examines the impact of macroeconomic conditions on the education and employment outcomes of youths in school-to-work transition. The dataset is based on five different cohorts from the Youth in Transition surveys (YIT) and the Longitudinal Surveys of Australian Youth (LSAY) and covers the period from 1985 to 2006, which is long enough to control explicitly for both poor and positive macroeconomic conditions. The multivariate analyses show that both the unemployment rates, and to a lesser extent economic growth rates, have an impact on youths’ education and employment outcomes. Although the effects vary significantly by gender and education level, overall the results reveal that poor macroeconomic conditions tend to drive young people out of full-time work and into inactivity or part-time work. In addition, poor macroeconomic conditions tend to discourage further education. A result worth noticing is that males who did not complete secondary school suffer the largest increase in unemployment risks as the unemployment rate increases.

Published abstract reprinted by permission of the copyright owner. Show less

This report is part of the Longitudinal Surveys of Australian Youth (LSAY) project which studies the transition of several groups of young Australians from school into postsecondary education and/or work. It discusses changes in the patterns of participation over the last two decades and also addresses several policy and conceptual issues relevant to educational participation. These include rurality, ethnicity, the influence of socioeconomic background, part-time work, and the effect of schools and psychological factors. Findings of this survey include: 76 per cent of the 1995 cohort participated in Year 12 in 1998; females are more likely to participate in Year 12 than males and gender differences have grown with more young women participating in higher education than men; Year 9 students whose parents work in high status occupations and/or come from more educated backgrounds are more likely to continue on to Year 12; students from language backgrounds other than English are consistently more likely to participate in Year 12 and higher education; students living in non-metropolitan areas are less likely to participate in Year 12 and higher education; Year 12 participation is strongly associated with achievement in literacy and numeracy in Year 9; and occupational background, school type and achievement are not as strongly associated with participation in higher education as they once were. Show less

LSAY briefing, produced by the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER), is a series which aims to provide summaries of findings from ACER research and to identify some of the implications for policy and further research. It is based on data from ACER's Longitudinal Surveys of Australian Youth (LSAY) project and key LSAY reports. This issue on early school leaving and 'non-completion in Australia' highlights that: students who perform well at school are less likely to leave school early; boys have a greater tendency than girls to leave school; students whose parents are less educated than average are more likely to leave school early; more than 20 per cent of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students leave school by the start of Year 11; only a small number of schools impact the school leaving rate; and a high proportion of early leavers in recent years have gained employment. Show less

The Longitudinal Surveys of Australian Youth (LSAY) program studies the progress of several groups of young Australians as they move from school into post-secondary education and work. This technical paper describes the weighting procedure developed for analysing the first five (1995-1999) waves of the 1995 year nine cohort (Y95) of the Longitudinal Surveys of Australian Youth (LSAY) study. The Y95 cohort of LSAY was drawn from the national sample of approximately 13,000 year nine students. It was constructed by randomly selecting two year nine classes from a national sample of 300 schools designed to represent state and sector. Show less

Having a choice of transition pathways from school to work, further education or training gives young people the best chance of success. Using the 1995 cohort of the Longitudinal Surveys of Australian Youth (LSAY), this study looks at the role post-school qualifications play in the year-by-year movement between labour market states by young people. Higher post-school qualifications are found to increase the chances of being permanently employed and provide protection against being persistently unemployed or out of the labour force. Show less

This report investigates the effect of post-secondary education and training on the occupation and earnings of young people. In this report, the data analysed are from a sample of young people who were first interviewed when they were in Year 9 in 1995 and subsequently interviewed annually. This report analyses annual data collected up until 2005 when they were, on average, 24 years of age. Participation in education and training was considered separately from obtaining a qualification and comparisons were made with those young people who did not participate in post-school education and training at all. The types of post-school education and training analysed were apprenticeships, traineeships, technical and further education (TAFE) certificates, TAFE diplomas, university diplomas, university degrees, post-graduate degrees and other qualifications comprising mainly courses run by private providers. The report examined the occupational status of jobs and weekly earnings by type of post-school education and training. The multi-level regression analyses reported here provide estimates of the effects of participation in and qualifications from these types of post-secondary education and training on occupational status and earnings. It also examines the effects of other influences, such as prior labour market experiences of work and unemployment, literacy and numeracy, school type, socioeconomic background and ethnicity. In addition, the report examined the role of gender as it is well established that there can be marked differences in the educational and labour market experiences of young men and women. Show less