Unpacking returns to vocational education in England: the role of skills, labour market sorting and mobility

在英国，高等教育的广泛参与伴随着相对较高数量的学生过早离开教育，无法适应劳动力市场。这种日益加剧的两极分化重新激起了政策制定者的兴趣，他们希望加强职业教育的作用，以改善学生的劳动力市场前景，同时缓解整个经济体的技能短缺。然而，关于职业教育经济效益的证据喜忧参半，而且根据不同的替代方案进行比较而有所不同。考虑到学生能力和社会背景的差异，Matthewes和Ventura(2022)最近来自英国的证据发现，选择职业教育而不是学术教育的学生会遭受巨大的收入损失，一些初步证据表明，职业教育可能会让那些在16岁时辍学的人受益。然而，由于数据的限制，我们仍然对英国职业教育的回报低于其他国家以及是否或如何改善这一点知之甚少。为了回答这个问题，我开始使用从与部门间商业登记(IDBR)相关联的纵向教育结果(LEO)数据中新获得的信息来研究哪些因素推动了英国学生教育和劳动力市场结果之间的关系，重点关注技能、劳动力市场分类和职业流动性的作用。我将分别关注那些在16岁时选择学业或辍学的职业学生，我将考虑学生获得的技能类型，这些技能如何决定他们所在的行业和公司的类型，以及他们更换工作和职业进步的能力。这项研究将在三个相互依存的研究目标中阐述：第一个目标将提供按教育划分的劳动力市场轨迹的描述性概述，在探索跨行业和跨公司选择性分类的作用之前，将收入增长分解为单独的工作之间和工作内的组成部分。第二个目标将研究入学职业教育对以学历教育为替代选择的学生的技能、就业部门和流动性的影响，将学生到16岁后教育机构的距离作为其教育选择的一个独立差异来源。最后，在第三个目标下，我将考虑2013年将受教育年龄提高到17岁是否促使学生参加职业课程，以及这是否导致他们获得更多技术或社交技能，使他们能够在薪酬更高的行业或公司找到工作。总体而言，我提出的研究的雄心是，通过结合来自英国的新颖而严谨的实证证据，并强调技能与劳动力市场结构之间的相互作用，来改善我们对职业教育经济回报的理解。通过这样做，这项研究将触及英国正在进行的教育政策辩论的核心，从而揭示英国的技能战略。这项研究将为英国政策制定者的改革努力提供参考，确保16岁后提供的教育与在21世纪英国劳动力市场取得成功所需的技能很好地结合在一起，从而使未来几代学生和工人受益。

In the UK, widespread participation in postsecondary education goes hand in hand with a relatively high number of students leaving education prematurely, ill-equipped for the labour market. This growing polarization has revived policymakers' interest in strengthening the role of vocational education as a way of improving students' labour market prospects while also relieving skills shortages across the economy.Yet, evidence on the economic benefits of vocational education is mixed and varies depending on the alternative it is compared to. Accounting for differences in students' ability and social background, recent evidence from England by Matthewes and Ventura (2022) finds significant earnings losses for students who opt for vocational rather than academic education, with some tentative evidence that vocational education may benefit those who would instead drop out of education at the age of 16. However, due to data limitations, we still know frustratingly little of why returns to vocational education in England are lower than in other countries and whether or how this could be improved.To answer this question, I set out to use newly available information from the Longitudinal Education Outcomes (LEO) data linked to Inter Departmental Business Register (IDBR) to study what factors drive the relationship between students' education and labour market outcomes in England, focusing on the role of skills, labour market sorting and job mobility. Focusing separately on vocational students who would have either followed an academic route or dropped out of education at age 16, I will consider the type of skills students acquire and how these determine the type of sector and firm they are employed in, as well as their ability to change job and progress in their careers.The study will be articulated in three interdependent research objectives: the first objective will provide a descriptive overview of labour market trajectories by education, decomposing earnings growth into separate between- and within-job components before exploring the role of selective sorting across sectors and firms. The second objective will study the effect of enrolling in vocational education on skills, sector of employment and mobility for students whose alternative is academic education, using students' distance to post-16 education institutions as an independent source of variation in their education choices. Finally, under the third objective, I will consider whether the 2013 increase in education participation age to 17 prodded students into vocational courses and whether this led them to acquire more technical or social skills, allowing them to find employment in better-paid sectors or firms.Overall, my proposed research has the ambition to improve our still imperfect understanding of the economic returns to vocational education by combining novel and rigorous empirical evidence from England with an emphasis on the interaction between skills and labour market structures. In so doing, the research will get to the heart of the ongoing debate on education policy in the UK, shedding light on the country's skills strategy. This research will inform British policymakers reform efforts, ensuring the post-16 education offer is well-aligned with the skills needed to succeed in the UK labour market of the 21st century, thus benefiting future generations of students and workers.