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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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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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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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For the first time, the matched Longitudinal Education Outcomes has been made available for analysis of qualification attainment and labour market outcomes in England. Using comprehensive information from different school, further education and higher education data sources, we estimate the association between achieving vocational qualifications at different levels of the Regulated Qualifications Framework and labour market outcomes (earnings, employment and benefits dependency) at the age of 26 for the cohorts of students undertaking Key Stage 4 schooling between 2001/02 and 2003/04. The analysis was undertaken separately for males and females and across different specifications, exploiting the richness of the information available in the matched dataset.

The findings suggest that, compared with individuals holding their highest qualification at the level immediately below in the Regulated Qualifications Framework, the association between attaining vocational qualifications and employment or earnings is generally positive and particularly large for Level 4 vocational qualifications, Apprenticeships, and National Vocational Qualifications at Level 3 and 2.

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The importance of apprenticeships for early labour market transitions varies across countries and over time. In recent times, there has been a policy drive to increase the number of people undertaking apprenticeships in England and there are plans to dramatically change the post-16 system, which would include making apprenticeships a more important part of it. This raises the question as to how beneficial apprenticeships are to young people currently - especially in the context of a country without an existing broad-base of apprenticeship provision. In this paper, we use administrative data to track students through their schooling and into the labour market. We analyse the payoff to apprenticeships for young people in the short term (when they are around 23 years old) and after a few years in the labour market (when they around 28 years old). We ask whether there is a payoff for young men and women in terms of employment and earnings. Our results suggest a positive earnings differential on average which has a causal interpretation. However, there is huge variability in the estimated earnings differential between sectors and this has important implications for the gender earnings gap because of the different choices made by men and women.

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We present estimates of changes in skills utilisation and in the returns to skills in the UK for 2002-2016 using new measures of skills derived from a systematic and detailed matching between the US O*NET system and UK [Standard Occupational Classification] SOC. Over the period, there is strongly increasing utilisation of both analytical skills and interpersonal skills, and declining use of physical skills. A decomposition analysis reveals that most of the change in skills utilisation is within occupations rather than between occupations, suggesting that the changes are pervasive throughout employment. The returns to skills are estimated using a standard Mincerian earnings function. We find positive and significantly increasing returns to analytical skills throughout the period. While the returns to interpersonal skills are lower than to analytical skills, they are also increasing over time, and are significant especially post-2010. Finally, the returns to physical skills are significantly negative over the whole period. The results suggest that the UK labour market is strongly increasing its demand for both analytical and interpersonal skills.

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Over the last decade, there has been a large increase in the number of individuals completing an apprenticeship, with the growth in numbers particularly strong amongst those age 25+ when starting their apprenticeship. This paper analyses the earnings differentials of those who complete their apprenticeship, relative to those who start an apprenticeship at the same level but do not complete. The differentials are estimated using a difference-in-differences framework, thus controlling for differences between groups captured by pre-apprenticeship earnings. The results consistently show that individuals who began their apprenticeship when aged 19-24 receive a larger increase in their daily earnings post-completion, relative to non-achievers, than individuals who began their apprenticeship when aged 25+. Subsequent analysis shows that for women with Intermediate and Advanced Apprenticeships, and for men at the Intermediate level only, this difference between age groups is mostly due to the older apprentices receiving a smaller differential within the same framework. For males with Advanced Apprenticeships, the difference between age groups is mostly due to the older apprentices training in areas with lower differentials.

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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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Most students do not follow the 'academic track' (i.e. A-levels) after leaving school and only about a third of students go to university before the age of 20. Yet, progression routes for the majority that do not take this path but opt for vocational post-compulsory education are not as well-known and not subject to the same degree of discussion in the media or in academia. In this paper [the authors] track decisions made by all students in England who left compulsory education after having undertaken the national examination (GCSE) at age 16 in the year 2009/10. [The authors] find that A-levels and vocational equivalents at Level 3 are equally strong predictors of staying on in education up to the age of 18 and achieving a Level 3 qualification before the age of 20.

[The authors'] findings are more troubling in relation to lower levels of learning: most people classified as pursuing 'Level 2' qualifications at age 17 do not progress any higher up the education qualification ladder. With respect to apprenticeships, the people accessing intermediate or Level 2 apprenticeships are lower achieving on average, and although the people accessing advanced apprenticeships are a little higher achieving than the average, they have a completely different profile than those students who undertake A-levels and go to university. In the public debate, it is often suggested that those undertaking A-levels should instead take up an apprenticeship. [The authors'] analysis suggests that this scenario is unlikely unless the type of apprenticeships on offer change in such a way as to appeal to these high achieving students. However, at a time of rising concern about UK inequality, it is more important than ever to focus on educational opportunities for all. One key focus should be on tackling the problem that [the authors'] research reveals: that those lower down the educational ladder lack clear progression routes.

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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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