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There is an apparent inconsistency in the existing literature on graduate employment in the UK. While analyses of rates of return to graduates or graduate markups show high returns, suggesting that demand has kept up with a rapidly rising supply of graduates, the literature on over-education suggests that many graduates are unable to find employment in graduate jobs and the proportion over-educated has risen over time. Using a simple supply and demand model applied to UK data that defines graduate jobs in terms of the proportion of graduates and/or the graduate earnings markup within occupations, we find that the employment of graduates in non-graduate jobs has declined over time. Hence, there is no evidence of an over-production of graduates in the UK.

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In recent years, the UK government has invested heavily in developing a computer infrastructure for e-learning in the post-16 educational sector. Electronic learning (e-learning) is defined as learning with the assistance of information and communications technology (ICT) tools. However, only a small percentage of this e-learning expenditure has been allocated to content and skill development and, in order to realise the potential of e-learning in the post-16 sector, this area must be developed. The Post 16 E-Learning Strategy Task Force was commissioned by the Department for Education and Skills (DfES) to consider how to improve the UK’s e-learning strategy. This report contains the Task Force’s four key recommendations that provide a strategy for enabling all learners to have the opportunity to use e-learning. The recommendations are: (1) that by 2010 all citizens should have access to ICT as a basic skill as an entitlement, including a component of e-learning; (2) that the government expand the concept of Curriculum Online for Schools into post-16 learning, i.e. College Online, to provide access to high quality and relevant learning content; (3) that the quality, relevance and accessibility of learning materials available to employers and government financial incentives to take up work-based learning be supported and developed; and (4) that funding be provided to develop a national tutor mentoring network to act as a flexible and responsive support system for those working with e-learners. Show less

The 2005 National Employers Skills Survey (NESS) was commissioned by the Learning and Skills Council (LSC), in partnership with the Sector Skills Development Agency (SSDA) and the Department for Education and Skills (DfES). It provides up-to-date information on the incidence, extent and nature of skills problems faced by employers and explores employers' activities and expenditure in relation to training. Over 74,500 employers were interviewed and comparisons are made with results from employer surveys dating back to 2001. This document is the main report from the survey. It is presented in seven sections: following the executive summary and introduction, section three explores the recruitment problems facing employers and their causes, focusing on the incidence, number, distribution and density of vacancies caused at least partly by a lack of skills, experience or qualifications among those applying; section four examines skills gaps within the workforce and their main causes; section five investigates the recruitment of 16-to-24-year-olds over the past 12 months and explores employers' perceptions of the work-readiness of these recruits and which skills, if any, are found to be lacking; section six focuses on training and workforce development, and explores the extent, nature and volume of training and workforce development activity; and the final section examines employer expenditure on training. Findings include: there has been little change since 2004 in the proportion of employers experiencing difficulty filling vacancies; the proportion of employers affected by skills gaps has once again decreased over the past 12 months, as it has every year since 2001; 21% of employers have recruited a young person into their first job direct from education in the past 12 months; 65% of employers have provided training in the previous 12 months, with the vast majority providing some off-the-job training; and total employer training expenditure over the previous 12 months was UKP 33.3 billion.

A related report containing the key findings is indexed at TD/TNC 86.444. Show less

This review aimed to systematically collect and synthesise empirical evidence related to interventions that focus on promoting employment for offenders in the UK. The review identifies gaps in knowledge and points to the priority areas for further review and future research. The key question addressed by the review is what evidence is there about the types and levels of intervention that work best to promote employment for offenders? This is separated into three sub-questions. What interventions promote employment in offender populations? What are the implementation issues for interventions aiming to promote offenders’ employment? To what degree are programs targeted according to assessment of needs? The process yielded 53 studies for in-depth review. A systematic map of the studies was produced with the majority coming from the US. Just over half of the studies specified names of programs and the majority of these were vocational programs. The review found that: good quality studies of seven intervention programs revealed that in six of these programs, offenders in the treatment group were significantly more likely to be employed at least six months after completion than those in comparison groups; generally, the programs examined by the studies provided a good range of skills relevant to the realities of the workplace; and prison work and vocational training were identified as being effective in promoting employment. Show less

Dual apprenticeship training is a market-driven form of education at the upper secondary level, taking place in firms as well as in vocational schools. So far, little is known about the impact of the business cycle on the number of apprenticeship programs offered by firms. Using panel-data of Swiss cantons from 1988-2004, we find that the influence of the business cycle is statistically significant, but small in size. Instead, supply of apprenticeship programs is driven to a much greater extent by demographic change. Conversely, the number of first-year high school students is not affected by the business cycle. We find, however, that enrollment increases if the population at age 16 grows, but access to high schools does not become more restricted in times of negative growth.

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This study attempts to explain why the transition to a market economy is skill-biased. It shows unequivocal evidence on increased skill wage premium and supply of skills in transition economies. It examines whether similar skill-favouring shifts in the Russian and US economies are driven by the same set of factors. [The] analysis elaborates on the model of alternative theories of the increased wage skill premium and then evaluates three main hypotheses: skill-biased technological change, the market adjustment hypothesis, and the institutional factor hypothesis. To test these hypotheses, the study uses unique linked employer-employee data that spans the 16 years of the Soviet and transition periods in Russia (1985-2000), with a special emphasis on data quality, measurement errors, and retrospective biases. The main conclusion is that there is no uni-causal and time-invariant explanation for skill-biased changes in wages and employment in the Russian economy. The increased skill wage premium has been driven mainly by institutional factors during the early period and by productivity and technological change during the late transition period, and reinforced by market adjustment of wage ratio to the true differences in labour productivity.

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This eighth edition of ‘Education and training statistics for the United Kingdom’ uses over 50 tables to provide an integrated overview of statistics on education and training in the UK. It covers: expenditure; schools; post-compulsory education and training; qualifications and destinations; population; and international comparisons. Key facts reported under ‘Post-compulsory education and training’ include: in 2001/02, 72% of 16 year olds and 58% of 17 year olds were in post-compulsory education either at school or in full-time further education; there were 47,300 new starts on Advanced Modern Apprenticeship schemes (AMAs) in England in 2002/3; the average number of learners on AMAs in 2002/3 was 108,300, representing almost two-fifths of the average year for the total number of learners on work-based learning for young people; people with high levels of qualifications were much more likely than those with low or no qualifications to have received job-related training; the economically inactive tend to receive job-related training of a longer duration than that received by employees; and a further education college or university is the most common location for off-the-job training. Show less

This study, based on Cohorts 9 and 10 of the England and Wales Youth Cohort Study (YCS), addresses a number of questions, including: (1) How many students work part-time in Years 12 and 13, and how many hours do they spend in jobs and on their studies? (2) What factors increase the probability of students taking part-time jobs? (3) What kinds of jobs do they do, and how much do they earn? and (4) What impact does part-time employment have on examination results? The extent of part-time employment amongst young people in full time education, both at age 16/17 and age 17/18, is described. Patterns of part-time employment amongst students in different types of courses, as well as the factors that increased theprobability of part-time employment from perspectives of gender, Year 11 results, ethnicity, home background and region, are looked at and a statistical model is fitted to disentangle the impact of these variables. The labour market for students aged 16/17 is analysed, providing information on occupational and industrial structure and wage levels and comparing the student labour market with that of 16/17 year olds who were not in full-time education. Further statistical models that explore the impact of part-time employment on examination results and/or vocational qualifications in Years 12 and 13 are presented. The final section highlights the main findings from the analyses and discusses their relevance to educational policy. Show less

We examine the dynamic role of education and experience as determinants of wages. It is hypothesised that an employee’s education is an important signal to the employer initially. Over time, the returns to schooling should decrease with labour market experience and increase with initially unobserved ability, since the employer gradually obtains better information on the productivity of an employee. Replicating US studies using data from a large German panel data set (GSOEP), we find no evidence for the employer learning hypothesis for Germany. Differentiating blue-collar and white-collar workers and estimating quantile regressions, however, leads to the conclusion that employer learning takes place for blue-collar workers at the lower end of the wage distribution. We further show, that information on the productivity of an employee is to a large extend private.

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This report forms part of the extensive evaluation of the adult basic skills Pathfinder Extension program which was launched by the Department for Education and Skills (DfES) in September 2001. Stage 2 of the evaluation focused on providing impact estimates and descriptive analyses of learner characteristics, their attitudes and their course experiences. It also introduces outcome measures such as employment outcomes, job changes and new course enrolment. There is a comparison of key characteristics between Pathfinder Extension participants and a comparison group of learners on traditional adult basic skills courses. Estimates of the impacts of Pathfinder activities compared to traditional provisions are given.

There are three accompanying reports on the evaluation of the Pathfinder Extension program: the report of Stage 1 of the evaluation is indexed at TD/TNC 75.222; an overview of the evaluation is indexed at TD/TNC 75.221; and the final report of the evaluation is indexed at TD/TNC 75.224. Show less