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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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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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As work changes, firm-provided training may become more relevant for good economic and social outcomes. However, so far there is little or no causal evidence about the effects of training on firms. This paper studies a large training grants programme in Portugal, contrasting successful firms that received the grants and unsuccessful firms that did not. Combining several rich data sets, we compare a large number of potential outcomes of these firms, while following them over long periods of time before and after the grant decision. Our difference-in-differences models estimate significant positive effects on take up (training hours and expenditure), with limited deadweight; and that such additional training led to increased sales, value added, employment, productivity, and exports. These effects tend to be of at least 5 per cent and, in some cases, 10 per cent or more.

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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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Further Education colleges are a key way in which 16-19 year olds acquire skills in the UK (much like US Community Colleges), especially those from low income backgrounds. Yet, little is known about what could improve performance in these institutions. We design and conduct the world's first management practices survey in these colleges (based on the World Management Survey) and match this to administrative longitudinal data on over 40,000 students. Value added regressions with rich controls suggest that structured management matters for educational outcomes (e.g. upper secondary qualifications), especially for students from low-income backgrounds. In a hypothetical scenario where a learner is moved from a college at the 10th percentile of management practices to the 90th, this would be associated with 8 per cent higher probability of achieving a good high school qualification, which is nearly half of the educational gap between those from poor and non-poor backgrounds. Hence, improving management practices may be an important channel for reducing inequalities.

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Remedial interventions in tertiary education are under scrutiny in most OECD countries. They are particularly important in a context of increasing demand for skilled workers. However, they are often costly, and their efficiency in boosting student performance has been questioned. This debate has gained particular relevance in England given recent policy changes that require students who do not get at least a grade C in English or maths in [general certificate of secondary education] GCSE to repeat exams in these subjects. The objective of this literature review is to provide an overview of recent empirical work on the impact of remediation policies in post-16 education on the outcomes of students, in terms of educational achievements and qualifications.

Recent evidence on the impact of traditional remediation interventions suggests that the effects are very mixed: remedial courses appear to help or hinder students differently by state, institution, background, and level of academic preparedness. Some recent studies that evaluate mentoring approaches have found evidence of positive effects and interestingly find that face-to-face services cannot easily be replaced by low-cost technology such as text messages. Another interesting finding is that combined approaches (such as academic support services and financial incentives) can be more effective than the provision of one of these services in isolation. It is also important to note that even when interventions find positive effects in the short run, they can quickly fade out in later years. Finally, studies often find the impact of remediation to vary according to students' characteristics. For example, in certain contexts, women, older students and lower-achieving students have been found to benefit more from remediation services. There is a critical need for more research using rigorous methodologies to understand why certain types of students are more (or less) responsive to certain interventions, and to tailor interventions and pedagogies accordingly.

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Some countries, notably those which have long had a weak history of vocational education like the UK and the US, have recently seen a rapid expansion of hybrid schools which provide both general and vocational education. England introduced 'University Technical Colleges' (UTCs) in 2010 for students aged 14 to 18. Forty-eight UTCs are currently open. We use a spatial instrumental variable approach based on geographical availability to evaluate the causal effect of attending a UTC on student academic and vocational achievement and on their labour market outcomes. For those pupils who enter the UTC at a non-standard transition age of 14, UTCs dramatically reduce their academic achievement on national exams at age 16. However, for students who enter at a more conventional transition age of 16, UTCs boost vocational achievement without harming academic achievement. They also improve achievement in STEM qualifications, and enrolment in apprenticeships. By age 19, UTC students are less likely to be unemployed and more likely to study STEM at university.

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Since April 2017, UK employers with an annual pay bill above £3 million have contributed to the Apprenticeship Levy. In this paper we use a matched firm-learner dataset to explore changes in apprenticeship and other training outcomes between 2015/16 and 2018/19, a period which spans the introduction of the Apprenticeship Levy. The findings reveal that over the period, there was a substantial shift away from lower-level apprenticeship starts to higher-level starts. Moreover, this shift was greater for employers who were required to pay the Levy, with smaller reductions in lower-level apprenticeships, and greater increases in higher-level apprenticeships when compared to similar non-Levy paying employers. No substantial differences were observed for other (non-apprenticeship) training undertaken over the same period.

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