Impact of the 13 Years of Guaranteed Education Programme (13YGEP) on Employment Potential and Income: A Survey in Kandy District of Sri Lanka.

Teenagers who drop out of mainstream education face risks of unemployment and social exclusion. In Sri Lanka, many students who fail to qualify for further studies at the GCE O/L examination consequently dropout from school education. The 13 Years of Guaranteed Education Programme (13YGEP) is a vocational subject stream introduced to the school curriculum in 2017 providing a new pathway for the students who fail GCE O/L to learn vocational subjects at school. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the short-term impact of the new vocational programme on employment potential and income of the youngsters. Primary data were collected from a sample of 200 participants living in Kandy district. Data analysis was performed using Chi-Square tests of independence and graphical methods. The results suggest that the vocational programme does not have a statistically significant impact on early employment potential. However, 15 percent of the teenagers who acquired vocational education have perused self-employment, an outstanding progress which none of the school dropouts in the sample could achieve. The students who left school and perused employment early earn more compared to those who studied vocational subjects, indicating that work experience contributes to higher early-career income. While the students who completed the programme appreciate the benefits, those who left school do not regret the forgone opportunity. The results highlight the importance of facilitating and supporting those who complete the programme to start new businesses. This is the first ever empirical assessment of the impact of the 13YGEP which is specifically targeted at GCE O/L dropouts in Sri Lanka. The long-term outcomes of the programme should be further studied in larger scale to evaluate its effectiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]