School variation in youth transitions in Ireland, Scotland and the Netherlands

(2004) - Cristina Iannelli

Journal: Comparative Education
Link:: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0305006042000274863
DOI:: 10.1080/0305006042000274863
Links::
Tags:: #paper #school-to-work #Transition #SchoolType
Cite Key:: [@Iannelli2004]

Abstract

In recent years there has been a growing interest in the comparative study of youth transitions. National and international studies have analysed the role of individual and institutional (education and labour market) factors in shaping the transition from school to the labour market. Using data drawn from a cross-national database of secondary school leavers and multilevel modelling, this paper aims to improve upon the existing research through the analysis of the effect of school factors (as well as individual factors) on pupils’ post-school outcomes. Results show that school variations in pupils’ post-school outcomes are mainly accounted for by curriculum type in the Netherlands, individual factors in Scotland and a mix of individual and school factors in Ireland.

Notes

“Results show that school variations in pupils’ post-school outcomes are mainly accounted for by curriculum type in the Netherlands, individual factors in Scotland and a mix of individual and school factors in Ireland.” (Iannelli, 2004, p. 401)

“In contrast to the past, for many students the moment of leaving school does not correspond to the starting point of their working career. There are at least three main reasons: (1) an increasing number of secondary school leavers choose to continue in education at tertiary level; (2) entering the labour market has become more difficult and a higher number of young people experience a period of unemployment before finding a job; (3) a reduction in the number of jobs requiring only basic education leads less qualified people to attend some vocational training programmes before entering the labour market.” (Iannelli, 2004, p. 401)

“Youth transition studies have used regression methods and restricted the analysis to a single level—the individual (micro) or the aggregate (macro) level. However, these approaches often fail to reveal relationships between individual and structural (or contextual) factors. This is because they do not take into account that individuals are clustered into contextual groups, one of which is the school (Rice & Leyland, 1996).” (Iannelli, 2004, p. 402)

“They have used multilevel methods of analysis to take into account the hierarchical structure of the student population (e.g., pupils nested within classroom and within schools).” (Iannelli, 2004, p. 402)

“Multilevel modelling considers pupils as clustered within schools so assuming that ‘the individual observations are not completely independent’ (Hox, 1995). This allows the study of two variance components: the withinschool and the between-school component. From a technical point of view multilevel modelling also gives a better computation of the standard errors of the estimates (Paterson, 1991).” (Iannelli, 2004, p. 402)

“The effect of the school is described in terms of the amount of between-school variation in pupils’ destinations that is explained by the characteristics of the school.” (Iannelli, 2004, p. 403)

“three main school distinctions will be introduced in the analyses: (1) the type of programme provided by the school—vocational, general or a combination of vocational and general subjects; (2) the private or public nature; (3) the denominational nature—Catholic, Protestant, interdenominational and non-denominational. These distinctions refer to the structural characteristics of the schools.” (Iannelli, 2004, p. 404)

“Because the dependent variable is dichotomous (Goldstein, 1995; Hox, 1995; Van der Velden & Wolbers, 1999) the variance at the individual level is set equal to 1. Thus, it is not possible to study the relationship between these two variances (individual and school level).” (Iannelli, 2004, p. 405)

“The independent variables at the individual level are: country of origin, sex, level of leaving school (lower- or upper-secondary level) and whether students passed or failed school exams.8” (Iannelli, 2004, p. 407)

“To avoid an excessive reduction of cases and to preserve the validity of the analysis, missing values are kept in the analysis and introduced as dummies among the independent variables.” (Iannelli, 2004, p. 408) WHAT????

“The independent variables at the school level are of two types: (1) structural characteristics which include the type of curriculum offered by the schools—vocational, general or a combination of vocational and general subjects—public/private and denominational/non-denominational nature of school; and (2) compositional characteristics—that is, social composition of the school and a measure of the average educational achievement within the schoo” (Iannelli, 2004, p. 408)

“The first youth transition analysed in this paper is the transition from school to post-school education (Table 2).” (Iannelli, 2004, p. 408)

“Social origin and school grades affect pupils’ chances of continuing in education: having parents from the service class or employed in routine non-manual occupations significantly increases these chances, and so does the achievement of higher school grades (Table 4, model 4).” (Iannelli, 2004, p. 412)

“The other most common transition after leaving school is entering the labour market.” (Iannelli, 2004, p. 412)

“Leaving school and entering the labour market does not always correspond to acquiring a job. A period of unemployment after leaving school has become a common experience among young people.” (Iannelli, 2004, p. 415)

“Vocational training after leaving school has emerged in the last 20 years as a third route between education and work. Training schemes (apprenticeship or youth programmes) have at least two main functions: to provide those vocational skills not taught at school and demanded by the labour market; and to increase the employability of less qualified and unemployed young people.” (Iannelli, 2004, p. 416)

“The results show that in all the transitions analysed schools significantly vary from each other in pupils’ outcomes.” (Iannelli, 2004, p. 418)

“In Scotland, in all transitions most of the between-school variance is explained by individual factors.” (Iannelli, 2004, p. 418)