09 June 2022 13:00 – 14:30
Technological advances, shifts in the nature of work, and other economic factors are set to transform the labour market over the coming decade. Schools and colleges have a vital role in shaping young people’s outcomes and the Longitudinal Education Outcomes (LEO) dataset provides an unprecedented opportunity to understand their long-term impacts.
The LEO dataset connects individuals’ education data with their employment, benefits and earnings data. In this webinar, we showcase four amazing projects using LEO data, including the recent report commissioned by Edge from NFER investigating the potential use of long-term school and college destination measures and work by colleagues at the Centre for Vocational Education Research, Education Policy Institute and Department for Education.
The webinar concludes with an interactive discussion about the possibilities that LEO data opens up and how we can collectively make the best use of this opportunity to improve outcomes for young people.
Featured
Karen Powell
Head of Research Strategy & Commissioning, ADR UK Strategic Hub
Karen Powell is Head of Research Strategy and Commissioning for the ADR UK Strategic Hub. Her focus is on providing research opportunities for the academic community to access ADR England’s flagship, research-ready data to conduct policy-relevant research, as well as establishing a professional community of administrative data researchers. Karen worked at the Department for Education for a decade before joining the Economic & Social Research Council (ESRC), including a secondment to a local authority education analysis team. Karen places a high importance on ensuring research can become useful evidence to inform better decisions for public good.
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“LEO data for England has always had huge potential for understanding the longer term outcomes of education. What ADR UK is really excited about is the additional value that this important data linkage can now bring to understanding and ultimately improving the long-term outcomes of education policy and practice because this data is now securely accessible to all accredited researchers via our trusted research environment, the ONS Secure Research Service. We look forward to a working alongside the DfE to grow the community of LEO researchers publishing and sharing their insightful and useful research.”
Sandra McNally
Director of the Centre for Vocational Education Research
Sandra McNally is a Professor of Economics at the University of Surrey. She is Director of the Education and Skills Programme at the Centre for Economic Performance, London School of Economics. She also directs the Centre for Vocational Education Research (funded by DfE from 2015 to 2020). Her research interests include economic evaluation of government policies in schools and further education and labour market returns to education and training. Her recent work includes evaluating the effectiveness of capital expenditure and management practices in Further Education Colleges. She is a co-editor of the Economics of Education Review.
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Researchers at the Centre for Vocational Education Research have used LEO for many of their research projects. Many such discussion papers are published here. The themes of this research include estimating returns to different qualifications and apprenticeships, as well as evaluating the effect of various government policies on individuals as they progress through education and enter the labour market. To name a few of these projects, we have evaluated the importance of passing grade thresholds in GCSE English for educational progression; whether University Technical Colleges have an effect on early learner outcomes; the extent to which there is a labour market return to apprenticeships; and the earnings premia attached to undertaking Level 4 and 5 qualifications. LEO can also be combined with survey-level data. For example, in a recent paper, we use the World Management Survey to assess management practices used by principals of FE and Sixth Form Colleges. We linked this to LEO data to evaluate whether this is associated with the outcomes of learners. We find that well run colleges boost learner performance and can help close the gap between poorer pupils and their peers. The paper is available here.
Jude Hillary
Head of Systems and Optimal Pathways Portfolios at the National Foundation for Educational Research
Jude is co-head of the UK Policy and Practice team at NFER, leading two of NFER’s strategic portfolio areas: Systems and Structures, which incorporates school funding and accountability, and Optimal Pathways which incorporates education to employment and social mobility. He is also the principal investigator of a large Nuffield funded research programme entitled ‘The Skills Imperative 2035: Essential skills for tomorrow’s workforce’.
Prior to joining NFER in 2016, Jude was Head of Statistics and Data at the Department for Education, where amongst other things he oversaw the development of new statistics on education destination measures and the creation of the Longitudinal Education Outcomes dataset.
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"The LEO dataset is an important, relatively new data resource which enables us to track whole cohorts of pupils from their time in the education system right through to the labour market. This key data source provides plenty of exciting opportunities to glean fresh insights and generate new evidence about how the education system helps prepare young people to achieve good outcomes when they enter the labour market."
Jenna Julius
Senior Economist at the National Foundation for Educational Research
Jenna is a Senior Economist at the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER). Her research focuses on the extent to which the structure of the education system affects the quality of education and the progression of young people from education to employment. She recently led an NFER research project, funded by the Edge Foundation, investigating the potential value of longer-term destination measures using the Longitudinal Educational Outcomes data.
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One of education’s many roles is to provide young people with the knowledge, skills and behaviours required to support their progression to further study, training and employment. However, the main focus of schools and colleges has historically been on short term attainment outcomes and less on long term specific measures of future labour market success. This exploratory research investigated whether existing data could help construct useful, supportive information for schools and colleges based on the longer-term destinations of former students.
“Our research draws on the Longitudinal Educational Outcomes data to show that there is potential for developing longer-term destination measures to help schools and colleges better understand how they are preparing young people for the future labour market. The findings suggest that policymakers should look to improve the longer-term destination measures available to schools and colleges at post-16 and work with schools and college leaders to develop best practice.”
The full report can be downloaded here.
David Robinson
Director, Post 16 and Skills at the Education Policy Institute
David joined EPI in June 2017 as the director for Post 16 and Skills. David’s background includes 6 years at the Department for Education, as the lead analyst first on school and college accountability and then on capital funding. Since joining EPI David had led a broad programme of research on Post 16 education, and now has over 10 years of experience in working with administrative education data including the NPD, ILR, HESA and now LEO datasets.
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Our research, which was commissioned by the Royal Society, considered trends in the subject diversity of level 3 (A levels or equivalent) qualifications taken by 16-19–year olds, and the association of this diversity with employment outcomes. Key findings include:
- The proportion of students with qualifications spanning three or more of the five main subject groups (sciences, maths, languages, humanities, vocational) has halved since 2010. This appears to be driven by reforms to A levels, including the decoupling of AS levels. The average number of qualifications taken fell by 43% between 2016 and 2019, from five to three.
- When comparing young people of similar backgrounds and educational attainment, some subject breadth is associated with marginally higher earnings by age 26. After controlling for prior attainment and other characteristics, those taking qualifications from two or more subject groups earn around three to four per cent more than those taking qualifications from only one subject group.
Alaster Smith
Head of Research Evidence and Engagement at Department for Education.
Currently in the Department for Education now, Alaster has been a social researcher in government for nearly twenty five years. Before that he was an academic researcher, studying and researching psychology for 11 years. He moved to a job in Government to get closer to decision making. Al started in the Home Office working on a range of crime and police investigative issues, then moved to the Government Office for Science where he headed a team reviewing central government departmental capability in use of scientific, research and analytic evidence throughout the policy cycle. Following a short stint in Higher Education funding policy he moved to a research role in DfE. Initially leading the higher education research programme, he now heads a central research unit dedicated to ensuring the provision of high-quality evidence across the department’s policy and delivery remit.
More LEO Pilot Projects
Fischer Family Trust: The long term outcomes of pupils with special educational needs and disabilities or who have been in Alternative Provision
FFT Education Limited are using linked NPD, ILR, HESA and LEO data in order to construct the journeys of pupils with special educational needs (SEN), are excluded or who attend alternative provision (AP) through the education system and into the labour market up to age 26. This work will provide new insight into the long-term outcomes associated with SEN, AP and permanent exclusion. In particular, how these outcomes are influenced by different types of setting (for example, mainstream school, resourced provision, state special school, independent special school) will be examined.
This work will provide new insight that will fill gaps in the current evidence base of policy related to SEN and alternative provision. This in turn will help to develop better informed policy to support young people with SEN or who experience alternative provision or permanent exclusion.
University of Westminster: Youth custody: educational influences and labour market consequences
The University of Westminster, in partnership with FFT Education Datalab, are using LEO data (NPD-LILR-HESA-LEO) for cohorts of children born between 1993/94 and 1998/99. With this data they are carrying out a detailed analysis of who experiences youth custody, what are the pathways leading up to it and what people do after release. The research will use advanced statistical techniques to estimate the impact of custody on subsequent labour market outcomes. The results will be made publicly available, actively disseminated and submitted to peer-reviewed academic journals. The public benefit of this work will be an enhanced understanding of the drivers of youth custody and how it affects young people’s ability to establish themselves in the labour market. This will provide a stronger evidence base on which to formulate education and other policy and thereby improve the prospects of the most disadvantaged young people. This research is funded by the Nuffield Foundation, and more information about this project can be found here.
Institute for Fiscal Studies: The long-run effects of the Education Maintenance Allowance
The Institute of Fiscal Studies (IFS) are using Longitudinal Education Data to investigate the effects of the Education Maintenance Allowance (EMA) — a government programme designed to raise upper secondary completion rates — on tertiary education and labour market outcomes. Previous work using survey data has found that the EMA raised upper secondary enrolment. Their project will investigate its effect on post-18 enrolment; employment and earnings at different ages; the security of employment; and the persistence of economic inactivity.
The public benefit of this work will be to provide guidance for policymakers on whether the EMA was effective in improving education and labour market outcomes, and therefore whether the programme delivers value for money. More broadly, the results will provide evidence on whether increases in upper secondary enrolment provide the intended labour market benefits. Future children would benefit from (a reinstatement of) the EMA if it was found to be effective, or from other programmes if it was found to be ineffective.
Learning and Work Institute: The employment and wage returns of apprenticeships for underrepresented and disadvantaged groups, and factors associated with their participation on apprenticeship programmes
Learning and Work Institute are using LEO, ILR and NPD linked data from the last ten years to investigate the employment and wage returns to apprenticeships for groups who are historically disadvantaged in the labour market and underrepresented in apprenticeships, such as individuals from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic backgrounds, individuals with learning difficulties or disabilities and individuals from deprived backgrounds. They are also investigating factors associated with participation in apprenticeships for these groups, such as demographics, school attainment and subject and level of apprenticeship. The public benefit of this work will be to shed further light on reasons for the underrepresentation of certain groups in apprenticeships and what adaptations to policy and practice could help to address this. In addition, it will help to determine the value of apprenticeships to these groups, both for the promotion of apprenticeships to and for the identification of disparities.
Oxford University: Care Leavers’ Transition into the Labour Market in England
The Rees Centre at the University of Oxford are using linked NPD, CLAD, ILR, LEO, and HESA data for a complete cohort of care leavers born in 1995/96 to track their social care and educational histories from the start of KS2 through to the year of their 21st birthday. With this data they will identify key care and educational factors and trajectories pre- and post-16 that contribute to the employability of care leavers.
The public benefit of this work will be to provide policy makers, potential employers, social workers, teachers, foster carers and care-experienced young people with a better understanding of the processes that facilitate or hinder care leavers’ participation in education, employment or training (EET), including relevant recent policy reforms and national schemes). In the longer-term, such understandings are expected to increase the percentage of care leavers in employment.