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The focus of the 2001 ACER Research Conference is on understanding young people's pathways from school to work and adult life and attempts to provide a 'state-of-the-art' review of: the pathways that are available to Australian youths and their views on opportunities and constraints; the major directions of Australian policy and practice; a comparison of Australian development with major overseas trends; evidence of the impact new forms of pathways have and factors that appear important for their success; the main at-risk groups towards whom policy needs to be directed; and the future research priorities. This document contains: (1) Summaries of conference papers; (2) Longitudinal Surveys of Australian Youth; (3) Conference programs. The papers presented at the conference are: What are pathways?: concepts and evidence from cross-national research / David Raffe; Early school leavers: who are they, why do they leave, and what are the consequences? / Gary Marks and Julie McMillan; Great divides in learning: youth learning pathways in rural and remote Australian towns / Barry Golding; Identifying and meeting the needs of 'at risk' young people / Robin Sullivan; Regional and local government initiatives to support youth pathways: lessons from innovative communities / John Spierings; The report from the Prime Minister's Youth Pathways Action Plan Taskforce: footprints to the future / Shelagh Whittleston; Doing what it takes: options and opportunities for supporting Australian Youth / Jane Figgis; How young people are faring in 2001: learning, work and transition: a summary / Richard Curtain; Building effective local industry-education partnerships to sustain young people / Harris van Beek; Does VET in schools make a difference to post-school pathways? / Sue Fullarton; How effective are apprenticeships and traineeship pathways / Chris Robinson; Meandering, diversions and steadfast purpose: Australian youth pathways in a comparative perspective / Richard Sweet; Improving pathways outcomes for young Indigenous Australians / Peter Buckskin; Understanding youth pathways: paths through the maze: route maps for education, community and health services / Jan Carter; The Longitudinal Surveys of Australian Youth program / Phillip McKenzie.

Individual papers presented at the conference are indexed from TD/TNC 68.426 to TD/TNC 68.440 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, which examines whether students' educational performance is influenced by where they live, highlights that: there are small differences between the literacy and numeracy performances of rural and urban students in the middle years of their education; there are only slight differences in their choice of subjects in Year 12 between rural and urban students, with rural students studying in the areas of health, home science and agriculture more frequently than their urban counterparts; the participation of young people living in regional and remote areas in Year 12 and higher education is lower than that of their urban counterparts; and the rates of participation in VET for rural people are at least as high as in urban areas. 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

This paper discusses the context of learning about work in secondary schools: growth in participation in the upper secondary school years, high levels of youth unemployment, fewer opportunities for students to learn employment-related skills through working in a job, fewer opportunities to interact with a range of adults, a longer period of economic dependency and emphasis on the context in which learning takes place. Successful programs designed to teach thinking skills, learning skills and higher-order cognitive skills incorporate three key features: characteristics of out-of-school learning (shared intellectual work and joining accomplishment tasks), aspects of apprenticeships and a basis in particular bodies of knowledge rather than general abilities. Different countries use different ways of introducing this learning, such as part-time work for full-time students, work experience programs, school-industry programs, vocational education programs, and job placement. Issues raised include monitoring labour market outcomes for the various forms of learning about work and the quality of learning in the workplace. Show less

In 2000, ACER introduced cohort reports as part of its Longitudinal Surveys of Australian Youth (LSAY) program to ‘provide an overview of the education, training and labour market experiences of the whole cohort on a regular basis, contributing to discussions of issues that affect young people’. Cohort reports supplement data already available from government statistics on enrolments and apparent retention rates. These reports are aimed at helping researchers to see the potential of the database as they use a wider range of the variables than may be used in the LSAY research reports.

This report contains information about the experiences of the 1995 LSAY cohort in 2002. Information on this cohort was first collected in 1995, when these young people were Year 9 students in Australian schools. The modal age of respondents at the time of the 2002 survey was 21 years. Highlights from this report include: 36% of the cohort were engaged in training; 25% were at university and six per cent at TAFE or a business college; five per cent were undertaking an apprenticeship or another form of study; more females than males were at university and TAFE, while more males were in apprenticeships; the majority of this cohort were not studying in 2002, with most either having completed a qualification or at least participated in some form of postsecondary education and training in previous years; only two per cent were not in the labour force and had not undertaken any form of postsecondary study or training; and most members of the cohort were happy with their lives. The contents are: The Year 9 class of 1995 in 2002; Education and training activities; Employment; Social aspects; Appendix; References.

Other cohort reports relating to the Year 9 class of 1995 are indexed at TD/TNC 78.211, TD/TNC 78.213 and TD/TNC 78.217. Show less