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The academic professoriate is a determinant of successful higher education systems. Yet, recently, worsening conditions of employment, deteriorating salaries, and threats to job security have made the academic profession less attractive, especially to young scholars, in several countries. This paper investigates the salaries as well as the recruitment and retention procedures in public higher education institutions from a cross country perspective. The UK, Germany, France, and Italy are adopted as case studies to determine the attractiveness of European higher education systems. The evolution over the last decade creates an extremely variegated picture.

We study whether autonomous schools, which are publicly funded but can operate more independently than government-run schools, affect student achievement and school segregation across 15 countries over 16 years. Our triple-differences regressions exploit between-grade variation in the share of students attending autonomous schools within a given country and year. While autonomous schools do not affect overall achievement, effects are positive for high-socioeconomic status students and negative for immigrants. Impacts on segregation mirror these findings, with evidence of increased segregation by socioeconomic and immigrant status. Rather than creating "a rising tide that lifts all boats," autonomous schools increase inequality

This government's Levelling Up mission for schools is that, by 2030, 90% of children will leave primary school having achieved the expected standard in reading, writing and maths, up from 65% in 2019. In addition, this white paper sets an ambition to increase the national GCSE average grade in both English language and in maths from 4.5 in 20193 to 5, for all secondary school pupils by 2030. In this report it is estimated the economic returns associated with achieving these ambitions. To achieve the Levelling Up mission, around one in four pupils will need to make sufficient improvements in Key Stage 2 (KS2) attainment by 2030 to reach the expected standard. It is estimated that the size of the attainment improvement will need to be equivalent to 0.87 of a standard deviation, or around 10 months of progress.

This research paper is one in a series produced as part of the Cedefop project The changing nature and role of VET (2016-18). The aim of the paper is to provide an overview of how CVET is conceptualised in various international level policy documents and how it is referred to across countries. It discusses national conceptions of CVET, the providers, participation by IVET graduates in non-formal education and training (NFE), and participation of adults in VET education institutions in European Union Member States, Iceland and Norway. The paper describes how the provision of CVET by different types of provider has changed over the past two decades, discussing the main drivers of this change and speculating about possible future trends. One of the main findings is that there are many dominant conceptions of CVET across Europe and the use of this term is not consistent, sometimes not even within countries. [The research was carried out by a consortium led by 3s Unternehmensberatung GmbH, led by Dr Jorg Markowitch; the consortium includes the Danish Technological Institute, the Institute of Employment Research (University of Warwick), the Institute of International and Social Studies (Tallinn University) and Fondazione Giacomo Brodolini. The Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training (BIBB) in Germany is supporting the project as a subcontractor.]

In her April 2010 NILOA paper, "Opening Doors to Faculty Involvement in Assessment," Pat Hutchings called for institutions to involve students in assessment, citing the potential to increase faculty engagement. In Curtis and Anderson (2020), the first author interviewed numerous partnership experts in both the United Kingdom and the United States regarding student-faculty partnerships and the extent to which students currently engage in the assessment process. Findings from the study make it clear that there currently exists little student-faculty partnership in assessment at the program- or system-levels. Combining existing research on partnership and the expert responses from the Curtis et al. study, we present a framework, based on prototyping, for developing student-faculty partnerships in program-level student learning outcomes assessment.

This paper provides an overview of government policy on young people who are Not in Education, Employment or Training (NEET) across the four UK nations. The paper argues that policy in England on this topic is less well-developed and coherent than in the other UK nations, and that the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic will serve to amplify the negative impacts of a set of underlying changes that have been taking place in the youth labour market and in employers' recruitment and selection practices. In addition, the paper notes that in much of the activity directed at reducing those with NEET status has been funded through the EU's European Social Fund and that uncertainty now clouds the continuance of these schemes, and that in England government has increasingly relied on the charities to help fill gaps in outreach and provision.

Principals (policy makers) have debated the progress in U.S. student performance for a half century or more. Informing these conversations, survey agents have administered seven million psychometrically linked tests in math and reading in 160 waves to national probability samples of selected cohorts born between 1954 and 2007. This study is the first to assess consistency of results by agency. We find results vary by agent, but consistent with Flynn effects, gains are larger in math than reading, except for the most recent period. Non-whites progress at a faster pace. Socio-economically disadvantaged white, black, and Hispanic students make greater progress when tested in elementary school, but that advantage attenuates and reverses itself as students age. We discuss potential moderators.

Which occupations are best for wellbeing? There is a large literature on earnings differentials, but less attention has been paid to occupational differences in non-pecuniary rewards. However, information on both types of rewards is needed to understand the dispersion of wellbeing across occupations. We analyse subjective wellbeing in a large representative sample of UK workers to construct a measure of "full earnings", the sum of earnings and the value of non-pecuniary rewards, in 90 different occupations. We first find that the dispersion of earnings underestimates the extent of inequality in the labour market: the dispersion of full earnings is one-third larger than the dispersion of earnings. Equally, the gender and ethnic gaps in the labour market are larger than data on earnings alone would suggest, and the true returns to completed secondary education (though not to a degree) are underestimated by earnings differences on their own. Finally, we show that our main results are similar, and stronger, for a representative sample of US workers. [Funding for this report was provided by an Écoles Universitaires de Recherche, EUR (University Research Schools, EUR) grant.]

The main focus of the paper is on youth unemployment and wider transitions into work, but it also has some thoughts on adult unemployment and re-training. This paper is founded upon a basic assumption -- namely that if the public money available across the United Kingdom to support measures around skills and unemployment is finite, then targeting those most at risk and defining which kinds of measures are the most cost-effective will be important. The information already available (Wilson et al, 2020) suggests that it is known which sectors, occupations, localities and kinds of people will most likely be hardest hit by the coming recession. The main issues will be deciding: (1) What groups to prioritise, which interventions will work best and most cost-effectively, and also which can be delivered to swiftly address the immediate problems liable to emerge as the furlough scheme is wound down and school, college and university leavers hit a disrupted labour market; and (2) what additional measures will be needed in the longer term as some groups experience extended periods of unemployment.

The purpose of this brief paper is to present initial findings from the recently collected London School of Economics and Political Science-Centre for Economic Performance (LSE-CEP) Social Mobility survey, which was undertaken as part of the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) project 'Generation COVID and Social Mobility: Evidence and Policy'. These are the first results from a project that is producing a detailed assessment of COVID-19's impact on education and economic inequalities and offering an assessment for the longer term consequences for social mobility in the UK. Alongside the survey findings, the authors have also analysed economic and education outcomes of individuals in April 2020 in the Understanding Society (USoc) national household panel data. Before the pandemic, younger generations were already facing declining absolute social mobility and real wage decline (Elliot Major and Machin, 2018, 2020a). Education inequalities were also widening. Here new findings are presented on inequalities in the workplace and the classroom that have emerged following the pandemic.

Key competences are important for personal development, employment, integration into society and lifelong learning. They are transversal and form the basis for all other competences. Acquiring key competences is possible through various learning pathways, including vocational education and training (VET). However, little is known at the European level of how VET supports the key competence development. This research paper investigates three key competences: digital, multilingual and literacy. It analyses the extent to which they are included in initial upper secondary VET in the EU-27, Iceland, Norway and the UK, as well as national policies supporting their development since 2011. It focuses on four areas of intervention: standards, programme delivery, assessment and teacher/trainer competences.

The European Union is likely the most far-developed cross-border public space for higher education. The European Higher Education Area (EHEA) and the European Research Area (ERA) both span an even larger number of countries including associate and partner countries of the EU. Based on shared European values, such as academic freedom, cross-border cooperation, and mobility, these policy frameworks have been developed in Europe over the last decades and with much success. HE systems in this area are thus well-positioned to benefit from cross-border mobility and collaboration but may at the same time face a certain loss of control over HE, for instance with respect to access due to the cross-border flows of students. This seems to make them vulnerable to populist tendencies and neo-nationalist politics seeking to inhibit the free movement of students, scholars, and data. Such tendencies have never been completely absent on the "old continent" but resurged over the uneven outcomes of globalization, the effects of the global financial and consequent Euro crisis, and the refugee crisis. Meanwhile, the impact of the coronavirus crisis is still by and large unknown. Populist tendencies seem now to be turning against the EU, with its freedom of movement for persons (i.e. open borders) as one of its cornerstones and are therefore of concern for the HE sector. Countries such as the UK, Switzerland, Denmark, and the Netherlands have a different position in the European landscape but are all struggling with the complexity of combining the virtues of an open system with constrained national sovereignty. Sovereignty is required in terms of steering capacity in order to balance access, cost, and quality, i.e. the well-known "higher education trilemma." In open systems this is challenged by the "globalization trilemma", which states that countries cannot have national sovereignty, (hyper)globalization and democracy at the same time. How are the EU, its Member States, and the HE sector responding? Will the Union stay united (i.e. Brexit)? Are the legal competencies of the EU in HE strong enough? What about the many European university associations, leagues, and networks? And what do the millions of (former) Erasmus students have to say?

This paper examines inequalities in the match between student quality and university quality using linked administrative data from schools, universities and tax authorities. We analyse two measures of match at the university-subject (course) level, based on student academic attainment, and graduate earnings. We find that students from lower socio-economic groups systematically undermatch for both measures across the distribution of attainment, with particularly stark socio-economic gaps for the most undermatched. While there are negligible gender gaps in academic match, high-attaining women systematically undermatch in terms of expected earnings, largely driven by subject choice.

This article explores the efficacy and cost effectiveness of New Labour's skills-based policies to help low paid workers adjust to the pressures generated by globalisation, of which the leading example was Train to Gain (T2G). It also analyses the more general issue of how, why and under what circumstances education, training and skills can help imbue low paid workers with greater bargaining power within the labour market.

From 2020 the health and relationships aspects of Personal, Social, Health and Economic Education will be compulsory in UK schools for adolescents. However less is known about how it can be taught in an effective manner. We examine, through a randomised trial, the impact of an evidenced based health related quality of life (HRQoL) curriculum called "Healthy Minds" that ran in 34 high schools in England over a four-year period. We find robust evidence that "Healthy Minds" positively augments many physical health domains of treated adolescents. We also find some evidence that "Healthy Minds" positively affects behaviour, but has no significant impact on emotional wellbeing. We find notable gender effects, strongly favouring boys. We also present evidence that "Healthy Minds" changes career aspirations, with those exposed to treatment being less likely to choose competitive work and more likely to choose work that involves "people-skills". Overall our work illustrates the potential for later childhood interventions to promote HRQoL and develop the career aspirations of adolescents.

Many students still leave school without a good grasp of basic literacy, despite the negative implications for future educational and labour market outcomes. We evaluate a programme that involves changing how resources are used within classrooms to reinforce the teaching of literacy. Specifically, the programme involves training teaching assistants to deliver a tightly structured package of materials to groups of young children. Further, we compare the effectiveness of computer-aided instruction using available software with the paper equivalent. We implement the experiment in the context of a Randomised Control Trial in English schools. Both interventions have a short-term impact on children's reading scores, although the effect is bigger for the paper intervention and more enduring in the subsequent year. This paper shows how teaching assistants can be used to better effect within schools, and at a low cost.

Almost in a blink of the eye the policy focus on the 'knowledge' economy, with mass ranks of high skilled workers, has given way to claims of widespread 'technological unemployment'. This Working Paper will examine competing claims on the relationship between automation, skills and the future of work. It examines the research evidence on the scale of job losses anticipated as a consequence of digital disruption. It presents three scenarios of the impact of digital disruption on future skill requirements, before considering how evidence on automation and digital disruption is used to influence and inform UK government policy interventions on skills, employment and labour markets. In conclusion, we recommend caution in interpreting existing evidence. While high profile reports on digital disruption make for eye-catching headlines, they make for poor policy formulation. A key message is that technology is not destiny. It is human decisions that will determine the future of work.

This research paper is the fifth in a series produced as part of the Cedefop project The changing nature and role of VET (2016-18). Based on comparative analysis of labour force survey data from 2014, the report analyses the vocational effect on labour market and education outcomes, asking whether any advantages conferred by vocational qualifications in early career would be offset by disadvantages later in life. The report explores the functioning of the safety net and the diversion effects across countries, demonstrating how these vary considerably with the specific institutional structure of schooling and work-based training. The results indicate that VET graduates are potentially sacrificing the longer-term gains associated with further education in favour of short-term benefits. [This research was carried out by a consortium led by 3s Unternehmensberatung GmbH and including the Danish Technological Institute, the Institute of Employment Research (University of Warwick), the Institute of International and Social Studies (Tallinn University) and Fondazione Giacomo Brodolini. The Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training (BIBB) in Germany is supporting the project as a subcontractor.]

This paper examines evidence from the HESA DLHE six-month Censuses and 3½ year ('longitudinal') surveys relating to three aspects of the flows of those who have left university with Higher Education Engineering qualifications, to test the robustness of the conclusions of SKOPE Research Paper No. 122 (Dixon, 2015), which showed strong evidence that most Engineering graduates do not go on to work in the sectors of the economy that might be expected, in particular in the 'natural' Manufacturing sub-sector. Specifically, the paper examines three questions: (1) whether evidence of starting salary levels for those from particular disciplines going into particular sectors could explain the relative flows (on the assumption that higher salaries for graduate vacancies in a particular sector would attract more applications); (2) whether evidence of sector destinations three years on from the (six-month after graduation) Census data analysed in Dixon (2015) would show up significantly different levels of 'leakage'; and (3) whether those entering employment having completed Taught Masters (as opposed to First Degree) courses in particular Engineering disciplines would tend (in the light of their apparent greater interest and deeper understanding in the specific discipline) to enter the "expected" sectors more than their Bachelors colleagues. The "bottom line" answers to these questions is that -- with rather minor exceptions -- none of the relevant broader evidence from HESA DLHE data over a ten-year period significantly questions the very considerable 'leakage', away from the 'natural' Manufacturing sub-sector, that was found and presented in Dixon (2015). (1) There is "some" correlation between the "average salaries offered" (by employers in each 'destination' sector to cohorts from each Engineering discipline examined) and the "size of the flows" from each discipline into each sector, but it is limited and rarely strong. While there might be reasons why average salary differences might not be large enough to provide a sufficient incentive for Engineering graduates to choose one sector over another, evidence of considerably greater correlation would have been helpful to justify the traditional response of classical economics to employers' concerns about shortages: "offer more money"! (2) While there are sample size issues constraining the statistical precision of comparisons between the two DLHE surveys, these have been addressed, and comparisons of the "linear flows" of graduates from each discipline into the natural Manufacturing sub-sector show (a) comparatively very small differences, and (b) on balance, slightly "greater" 'leakage' three years on; and (3) More MSc's in "Automotive" and "Aerospace Engineering" have, over the ten years examined, then gone into the "Manufacture of Motor Vehicles"... and "Air and Space craft manufacture" (respectively) than BEng's from these disciplines. However, for the other disciplines compared, there is little difference, and -- in terms of entry into Manufacturing as a whole, for the most recent year in the period - the fraction of the disciplinary cohorts entering "any type of Manufacturing" is slightly "higher" for MSc's than First Degree (FD) graduates in "three" Engineering disciplines, though "lower" for MSc's than FD's in "four"! This new evidence, therefore, only serves to "strengthen" the great importance of NOT assuming linear flows of Engineering graduates into the "natural" Manufacturing sub-sectors corresponding to their discipline, in particular in policy responses to reports of shortages from such sub-sectors.

The digital revolution and automation are accelerating changes in the labour market and in workplace skills, changes that are further affected by fluctuations in international and regional economic cycles and employment opportunity. These factors pose a universal policy challenge for all advanced economies and governments. In the workplace, people seek to acquire contemporary and relevant skills to gain employment and retain transferable skills to maintain employment. The central purpose of this paper is to investigate how other nations or regions are dealing with these issues. What approaches are they taking to understanding the mix and dynamics of the skills attained by individuals and, more broadly, the totality of skills that in aggregate constitute a highly capable and adaptable labour force, one that supports firm viability and greater national productivity. This research has examined a range of initiatives and approaches being developed or in use in selected countries, including the United States, Singapore and New Zealand, and agencies/organisations; for example, the European Commission and the Skills for the Information Age Foundation. In doing so, it showcases the good practices used to ensure that occupational-level skills information remains current and widely accessible. [For "Identifying Work Skills: International Case Summaries. Support Document," see ED579875.]

The UK's overall school budget has been protected in real terms but does not provide for funding per pupil to increase in line with inflation. Because pupil numbers are increasing, large falls in expenditure per pupil are expected over the next few years unless more funding is allocated. The situation facing post-16 education is a lot worse. A more widespread adoption of grammar schools is very likely to increase socio-economic segregation by school type and is unlikely to lead to any increase in average educational attainment in the country. Although increasing intermediate skills among young people and adults is needed, many concerns have been raised about the how apprenticeship policy is being implemented. This includes an emphasis on quantity over quality and differences in the provision of training opportunities for large employers compared with small and medium-sized enterprises.

Schooling can produce both cognitive and non-cognitive skills, both of which are important determinants of adult outcomes. Using very rich data from a UK birth cohort study, I estimate teacher value added (VA) models for both pupils' test scores and non-cognitive skills. I show that teachers are equally important in the determination of pupils' test scores and non-cognitive skills. This finding extends the economics literature on teacher effects, which has primarily focused on pupils' test scores and may fail to capture teachers' overall effects. In addition, the large estimates reveal an interesting trade-off: teacher VA on pupils' test scores are weak predictors of teacher VA on non-cognitive skills, which suggests that teachers recourse to different techniques to improve pupils' cognitive and non-cognitive skills. Finally, I find that teachers' effects on pupils' non-cognitive skills have long-run impacts on adult outcomes such as higher education attendance, employment and earnings, conditional on their effects on test scores. This result indicates that long-run outcomes are improved by a combination of teachers increasing pupils' test scores and non-cognitive skills and has large policy implications.

The employer benefits arising from the direct participation of employees in learning at work are clear: apart from developing the requisite skills and abilities to be productive, both task discretion and organisational participation are significantly related to better quality training. Against a background of falling employer investment in education and training the Government has supported the growth of independent training providers (ITPs) in the hope that this will drive up employer engagement in formal vocational education and training (VET) schemes. The case for doing so is, on the face of it, persuasive but when account is taken of the variable impact that outsourcing VET can have on organisations it becomes clear that this is dependent on how well it is managed. The factors that affect the success with which organisations engage ITPs appear to be poorly understood. This report highlights some of the associated areas that need to be looked at more closely to inform the development of best practice and public policy.

We investigate the extent to which graduate returns vary according to the class of degree achieved by UK university students and examine changes over time in estimated degree class premia. Using a variety of complementary datasets for individuals born in Britain around 1970 and aged between 30 and 40, we estimate an hourly wage premium for a "good" (relative to a "lower") class of degree of 7% to 9%, implying a wide spread around the average graduate premium. We also estimate the premium for a good relative to a lower degree for different cohorts (those born between the mid-1960s and early-1980s) and find evidence that the premium for a good degree has risen over time as the proportions of cohorts participating in higher education have increased. Tables and a list of university types are appended.

The United Kingdom (UK) has dramatically increased the supply of graduates over the last four decades. The university system has successfully produced a huge increase in mass higher education over the last 40 years to meet an increased demand for skilled workers. It is one of the UK's most successful export industries in terms of attracting foreign students and is second only to the US in terms of scientific prestige. The coalition government's efforts to transfer the financial burden of higher education away from the taxpayer and towards graduates, and create a more efficient, competitive sector, have not yet materialised. In fact, the current system has almost no price variation and is almost as expensive as the one it replaced. This report discusses the costs and growth of higher education in the UK.

England's performance in international tests of student achievement continues to be disappointing. Further improvement is essential not only for students' themselves but also for economic growth. This briefing considers the impact of Academies, school spending and teacher quality. Research evidence suggests that it is right to protect school budgets but too early to judge the Coalition's Academies policy. Although there was a large improvement in the first 200 schools (about 4 years after conversion), those schools were disadvantaged and underperforming (unlike the more recent academies) and the current programme is much larger scale. There is broad agreement that high quality teaching matters hugely for student achievement, but there is no magic national formula to bring this about.

This white paper analyzes the potential effects of requiring income-driven repayment for all federal loans as well as relying on paycheck withholding for loan payments, with particular attention to the implications for low-income students and families. The Institute for College Access & Success (TICAS) also examines the relevance and evolution of mandatory IDR ["income-driven repayment"] systems in Australia and the United Kingdom, and the paper includes specific recommendations to streamline and improve student loan repayment options in the United States. Two appendices are included: (1) Citation List of Figure 2: "Key Comparisons of IDR Systems and Context: U.S., U.K., and Australia"; and (2) Borrower Example Details.

We investigate the rapid influx of overseas students into UK higher education and the impact on the number of domestic students. Using administrative data since 1994/5, we find no evidence of crowd out of domestic undergraduate students and indications of increases in the domestic numbers of postgraduate students as overseas enrolments have grown. We interpret this as a cross-subsidisation and establish causal findings using two methods. Firstly, we use the historical share of students from a sending country attending a university department as a shift-share instrument to predict enrolment patterns. Secondly, we use a change in Chinese visa regulations and exchange rates in combination with strong subject preferences as a predictor of overseas student growth. The following are appended: (1) Additional Figures and Tables; and (2) Data Description. [This paper was produced as part of the Centre's Education & Skills Programme. The Centre for Economic Performance is financed by the Economic and Social Research Council.]

We investigate if there is a causal link between education and health knowledge using data from the 1984/85 and 1991/92 waves of the UK Health and Lifestyle Survey (HALS). Uniquely, the survey asks respondents what they think are the main causes of ten common health conditions, and we compare these answers to those given by medical professionals to form an index of health knowledge. For causal identification we use increases in the UK minimum school leaving age in 1947 (from 14 to 15)and 1972 (from 15 to 16) to provide exogenous variation in education. These reforms predominantly induced adolescents who would have left school to stay for one additionally mandated year. OLS estimates suggest that education significantly increases health knowledge, with a one-year increase in schooling increasing the health knowledge index by 15% of a standard deviation. In contrast, estimates from instrumental-variable models show that increased schooling due to the education reforms did not significantly affect health knowledge. This main result is robust to numerous specification tests and alternative formulations of the health knowledge index. Further research is required to determine whether there is also no causal link between higher levels of education--such as post-school qualifications--and health knowledge. An appendix entitled, "Sensitivity of results to alternative definitions of health knowledge index," is included. [This paper was produced as part of the Centre's Education Programme. The Centre for Economic Performance is financed by the Economic and Social Research Council.]

This study addresses qualifications at level 5 of the European qualifications framework (EQF) in 15 countries (Belgium (Flanders), the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Ireland, France, Croatia, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Austria, Portugal, the United Kingdom (EWNI and Scotland) that had linked their national qualification levels to the EQF by June 2012. EQF level 5 qualifications play an important role in providing access to employment and career advancement as well as enabling further learning and progression to higher education. This double function makes them attractive to learners and employers. Although the extent to which countries use qualifications at EQF level 5 differs, their importance is growing in all countries investigated for several reasons. First, they are developed as response to increased needs for advanced technical and/or management skills. Second, they seem to be especially attractive to students with VET background and those already in employment. They also contribute to lifelong learning by being accessible and attractive for adults and non-traditional learners. The following are appended: (1) List of working definitions; (2) List of interviewees; (3) Available data on EQF level 5 qualifications; (4) Key purposes and functions of qualifications; (5) Further material on learning outcome descriptions of qualifications; and (6) Duration and mode of delivery. A bibliography is also included. [The research was carried out by Panteia in consortium with 3S under Cedefop service contract AO/ECVL/JBSPEV/Qualifications_EQF_level_5/001/12.]

Differences in teacher quality are commonly cited as a key determinant of the huge international student performance gaps. However, convincing evidence on this relationship is still lacking, in part because it is unclear how to measure teacher quality consistently across countries. We use unique international assessment data to investigate the role of teacher cognitive skills as one main dimension of teacher quality in explaining student outcomes. Our main identification strategy exploits exogenous variation in teacher cognitive skills attributable to international differences in relative wages of nonteacher public sector employees. Using student-level test score data, we find that teacher cognitive skills are an important determinant of international differences in student performance. Results are supported by fixed-effects estimation that uses within-country between-subject variation in teacher skills.

In this paper, we survey the UK-based literature on school structures and school autonomy to identify settings in which alternative and more autonomous school arrangements can improve the educational attainments of pupils in the bottom tail of the achievement distribution. We also present new evidence on the effect of school academies on the age-16 GCSE attainment of students of different abilities up to 2009, before the Coalition Government changed the nature of the Labour academy programme. Within the UK education system, academies enjoy substantial autonomy in terms of management of their staff, taught curriculum, length of the school day and other aspects of their day-to-day functioning. Our results show that schools that converted to academies between 2002 and 2007 improved their overall age-16 GCSEs results by further raising the attainments of students in the top half of the ability distribution, and in particular pupils in the top 20% tail. Conversely, we find little evidence that academies helped pupils in the bottom 10% and 20% of the ability distribution. Finally, we find little evidence that late converters (2008 and 2009) had any beneficial effects on pupils of any ability. We conclude our research by comparing the experience of UK academies to that of US charter schools and Swedish free schools, and by providing some insights into the reasons why UK academies did not serve "the tail" as is the case for some US charter schools. An appendix presents Table 1: Academies and GCSE Performance--Teh Effect of Academy Conversion on Pupils of Different Abilities.

A strong VET system is increasingly seen as essential to overcoming the current economic crisis in Europe. VET is seen as a powerful tool to assist in balancing labour market inefficiencies, increasing youth employment possibilities, and reducing skills mismatch. Its inherent flexibility and closeness to the labour market place VET in a good position to contribute to a faster economic recovery and long-term sustainable development. However, crucial for this role is continuous and systematic VET renewal that assures its relevance for the labour market. This publication explores 15 European national approaches to feedback mechanisms between VET and the labour market. It illustrates the diversity of solutions currently applied across Europe and how they are embedded in national traditions and education philosophy. The study asks three fundamental questions: how inclusive are national mechanisms for feedback between the VET system and the labour market; how responsive are existing mechanisms; and how transparent? Three annexes provide: (1) Case Studies; (2) List of interviewees; and (3) List of experts responsible for the country overviews. Bibliography and references are included. [This paper is the result of a team effort reflecting the work of a research consortium led by Jörg Markowitsch from 3s Research Laboratory who together with Tanja Bacher, Carol Costley, David Etherington, Gerhard Geiger, Günter Hefler, Jelena Helemäe, Triin Roosalu, Ellu Saar, Auni Tamm, and Odd Bjørn Ure conducted the research and fieldwork and drafted the report. This work was carried out under Cedefop's service contract No 2011-0161/AO/ECVL/JB-IPS/Cooperation Labour market--VET/007/11.]

The four "home countries" of the United Kingdom are becoming increasingly different with regard to education policy. Nevertheless, they are still highly comparable as compared to education systems elsewhere. Over time, they have had a similar legislative framework (particularly in England, Wales and Northern Ireland) and, in a broader sense, there is a similar social context across the four countries. For example, there is a comparable level of inequality across many education indicators, with similar trends emerging in recent times. In-depth analysis by the National Equality Panel (2010) attributed this to the fact that policies most important for influencing distributional outcomes (such as tax and benefits) are UK-wide. In this paper, the authors take the opportunity to appraise differences and similarities in educational policies and outcomes in the four UK nations. The fact that England has pursued very different policies in the recent past than Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland provides a good testing ground to undertake such a comparative review of what has and has not worked so well in terms of the education reforms that have taken place. The content of the paper is structured as follows. In Section 2, the authors discuss some key areas of education policy in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. In Sections 3 and 4, they compare the countries in terms of educational performance and inequality. In Section 5, the authors then discuss evaluation evidence as it relates to key educational issues and the differences and similarities in educational outcomes across the different UK nations. Section 6 offers some concluding remarks. Data Appendix is included. (Contains 8 tables, 1 figure and 6 footnotes.)