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We employ sequence analysis techniques to evaluate the myriad of different pathways individuals take through the education system into the labour market. Using data from the Longitudinal Study of Young People in England (LSYPE), matched to administrative records from the National Pupil Database (NPD), we compare the trajectories of individuals through compulsory and post-compulsory education and examine their early labour market outcomes, measured at age 25. We employ cluster analysis to identify groups of individuals who experience more similar education-employment transitions and examine the characteristics that could potentially be used to target those who are more at risk of poorer education and early labour market outcomes. As well as [General Certificate of Secondary Education] GCSE performance at age 16, particularly in Maths and English, we find that parental advice and aspirations, and attitudes towards HE formed by age 14, are all important in predicting individuals' pathways through post-compulsory education and into work.

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The general debate on the relationship between school resources and student outcomes is an old and controversial one (for reviews see, for example, Hanushek, 1989, 1997 and Gibbons and McNally, 2013), although there is less evidence on the effect of capital expenditure. This paper provides new evidence by studying the effect of capital expenditure in Further Education (FE) Colleges in England. These colleges provide post-compulsory schooling education, similar to US Community Colleges. About half of school leavers in England attend FE colleges, though they are generally considered the poor relation of schools and universities, enrolling lower achieving students and with less resources per student (Britton et al. 2019). Capital investment projects in these colleges have the potential to improve educational outcomes for large numbers of disadvantaged students and thus to facilitate social mobility. These colleges also have an important role to play in providing the intermediate and higher technical skills which are widely regarded as being in short supply in Britain.

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Following a number of policy changes, there has been a significant decline in apprenticeship starts and change in their composition over the last few years. In this report, we describe how apprenticeships have evolved between August 2014 and July 2020 and what characterises apprentices themselves in terms of their demographic background. We use information available in administrative data - the Individualised Learner Record and the National Pupil Database. We interpret what this may imply for inequality and social mobility along various dimensions.

The number of apprenticeship starts in England has reduced dramatically in recent years following government reforms and the [Coronavirus Disease 2019] COVID-19 pandemic. The composition has also shifted from almost complete domination by low and intermediate level apprenticeships to one where higher and degree apprenticeships constitute a significant share (26 per cent in 2020). Even though the number of apprenticeships has decreased, policy changes have likely improved their average quality. One might characterise the changes (at least up until the pandemic) as a substitution of quantity for quality. But this might have come at the cost of less equitable access with, for example, those living in disadvantaged neighbourhoods losing out from these changes.

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The study investigates the impact of socioeconomic background on the academic match of students in post-compulsory upper-secondary education making use of detailed individual-level linked administrative data from schools, colleges and tax authorities in England. Academic match occurs when student quality matches the quality of the qualification that they take and is measured using a continuous variable which defines undermatched, matched and overmatched students based on the distance between each student's prior attainment in age 16 high-stake examinations and the median prior attainment of the other students who achieved their chosen academic or vocational qualification. Students from socially disadvantaged backgrounds are found to be more likely to be exposed to academic undermatch compared to their more advantaged peers and this effect is identified to be greater among the highest achieving students. Also, the study demonstrates that undermatched students are more likely to be found in schools with lower proportions of high achieving students and higher proportions of disadvantaged students. Among the highest achieving students, 80 per cent of the identified socio-economic gap in academic match can be explained by such differences in the schools that those students from differing backgrounds attend. In addition, the study identifies indications that significant masses of undermatched students are more likely to be found in rural districts with higher rates of youth unemployment and higher proportions of poorly educated residents. Finally, the study establishes a positive relationship between academic assortative matching and labour market income returns. Non-university participating girls who were one standard deviation less undermatched earned 17 per cent more at age 25 while non-university participating boys earned 5 per cent more.

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In recent times, there has been a policy drive to increase the number of people undertaking apprenticeships in England. In this paper we examine the characteristics of young people who start an apprenticeship and we look at whether there is an earnings premium a few years later. Specifically, we use administrative data in England to track students through their education and into the labour market. We analyse the earnings differential to starting an apprenticeships after a few years of experience (at the age of 28). Starting an apprenticeship is associated with a positive earnings differential on average. This is much larger for men than for women, mainly reflecting the different sectors in which they start their apprenticeship. Our analysis also suggests barriers to opportunity for accessing apprenticeship in the first place - for example, for those from economically disadvantaged backgrounds.

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Although 10 per cent of school leavers in England start low level vocational education (normally below Level 2, 'BL2'), very little is known about the characteristics of learners, their participation in vocational education and their labour market outcomes. Benefiting from large size linked administrative data for a full cohort of young people, [the authors] use sequence analysis methods to understand the similarities and differences in the biographies of young people who engaged in BL2 programmes initially, and create clusters of learners with similar biographies.

As a result of [their] exploratory analysis, [the authors] find four main BL2 trajectories which can help policy makers target their interventions more efficiently: About 45 per cent of all BL2 learners show a clear progression in college-based vocational education to programmes at higher levels, while 21 per cent make a transition into a persistent [not in employment, education or training] NEET status, mainly from dropping out in year one. Another 21 per cent move to sustained employment, mainly after their first year, sometimes after undertaking a Level 2 qualification. Progression to apprenticeships was achieved by 13 per cent. Another key finding is that achieving the low level qualification started by the age of 16 leads to better employment prospects and to higher earnings four years later. This suggests that policy should encourage and support adolescents' engagement until they successfully gain their (low level) qualification.

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The underrepresentation of women in science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) occupations is a world-wide phenomenon and a concern for policy makers. This is the case in the UK where a shortage of STEM skills is also being encountered. Marked gender imbalances in STEM study in higher education and A-level study and have been widely documented. Gender gaps are also apparent in vocational post-16 education though the existence and causes of these imbalances have, to date, received little attention in existing research and public policy. This paper uses administrative data on a full cohort of school leavers in 2005/06 to explore the extent of gender imbalances in STEM qualifications attempted and achieved in both academic and vocational post-16 education routes in England. We find that gender differentials in the uptake of STEM subjects in vocational qualifications are much starker than they are in A-Levels and that while the roles of ability, socio-economic status and school characteristics in explaining gender differentials differ with the education route taken, their power in explaining these gaps is limited.

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In this paper, we estimate the long-term labour market effects of Entry to Employment (E2E), an intervention designed to improve the non-cognitive skills of low-achieving adolescents in England. Using an instrumental variable (IV) approach, we find that E2E courses substantially increased earnings of participants in the long-run. The increase is primarily driven by a large and significant effect on the probability to be in employment. Placebo tests and robustness checks provide further support that the link is unlikely to be affected by unobserved confounders.

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Many countries consider expanding vocational curricula in secondary education to boost skills and labour market outcomes among non-university-bound students. However, critics fear this could divert other students from more profitable academic education. We study labour market returns to vocational education in England, where until recently students chose between a vocational track, an academic track and quitting education at age 16. Identification is challenging because self-selection is strong and because students' next-best alternatives are unknown. Against this backdrop, we leverage multiple instrumental variables to estimate margin-specific treatment effects, i.e., causal returns to vocational education for students at the margin with academic education and, separately, for students at the margin with quitting education. Identification comes from variation in distance to the nearest vocational provider conditional on distance to the nearest academic provider (and vice-versa), while controlling for granular student, school and neighbourhood characteristics.

The analysis is based on population-wide administrative education data linked to tax records. We find that the vast majority of marginal vocational students are indifferent between vocational and academic education. For them, vocational enrolment substantially decreases earnings at age 30. This earnings penalty grows with age and is due to wages, not employment. However, consistent with comparative advantage, the penalty is smaller for students with higher revealed preferences for the vocational track. For the few students at the margin with no further education, we find merely tentative evidence of increased employment and earnings from vocational enrolment.

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In this paper, we estimate the effect of a reform of apprenticeships in England in 2012, which changed the duration for Intermediate Apprenticeships in many industries, while other sectors already exceeded the incoming minimum duration. We focus on the group the 19-24 year olds, who experienced a genuine increase in apprenticeship duration and estimate the impact on apprenticeship starts, achievement of the qualification and employment and earnings outcomes. We find that the reform reduced apprenticeship starts in the sectors affected (by 13 to 33 per cent), increased drop-out rates (by 3-5 percentage points) and reduced achievement of the qualification (by 4-7 percentage points), but also significantly increased earnings (by 7 per cent compared to counterfactual for 19-24 year olds without Level 2 qualifications).

The main limitation of this study is that it is not possible with the available data to test whether the increase in earnings was driven by those who achieved a longer apprenticeship, by learners dropping out of their apprenticeships to get a better-paid job, or by a compositional change (i.e. weaker young people not starting an apprenticeship). However, in our view, the positive effect on earnings indicates that the [specification of apprenticeship standards] SASE reform improved the job matching of young people to available employment opportunities, which was the reform's ultimate purpose.

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