Post-Compulsory Educational Aspirations and Choices in England
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Post-compulsory educational aspirations and choices in England Konstantina Maragkou A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Economics The University of Sheffield November 2019 Abstract This thesis consists of three relevant yet independent empirical studies investigating different questions regarding the determinants of post-compulsory educational aspirations and choices of an English cohort born between 1989-1990 using very detailed survey and administrative data records. The first study investigates whether the importance of socio-economic background and ability in determining the post-compulsory educational aspirations and choices of young people changed over time by comparing the analytical cohort with an older cohort born in 1970. Educational aspirations and choices are defined as the selection between academic, vocational and no-post compulsory education. The study identifies a decreasing socio-economic effect over time on both aspirations and choices for academic and no post-compulsory education providing evidence that the expansion of academic education has proportionately benefited individuals from all social backgrounds. Further, the study identifies a decreased participation in vocational education which did not arise from falling aspirations but because of rising aspirations and actual participation in post-compulsory academic education. The second study investigates whether the educational aspirations of secondary school students are influenced by their school peers. Peer effects on individuals' intentions to stay in education are found to be significant for boys but not for girls. Conditional on their plans to remain in post-compulsory education, peers' ability and aspirations to follow an academic rather than a vocational education pathway, have a positive and significant effect on individuals' aspirations to follow an academic route. The study also finds evidence that the provision of information, advice and guidance by schools or external agencies can serve to mitigate peer effects. Finally, individuals with higher ability peers are less likely to have changed their educational aspirations between Year 9 and Year 11 of schooling. The third study uses detailed administrative records for the whole population of the analytical cohort to investigate the impact of students' socio-economic background on their academic match in 16-19 post-compulsory education. Academic match would occur when students are matched to post-compulsory qualifications studied by similarly attaining peers. Disadvantaged students are found to be more likely to be exposed to academic undermatch compared to their more advantaged peers. The phenomenon is apparent even between i students within the same school. The study also identifies that undermatched students are more likely to be found in disadvantaged schools with lower proportions of high achieving students and higher proportions of ethnic minority and disadvantaged students. In addition, the results indicate that significant masses of undermatched students are more likely to be found in rural districts with higher rates of youth unemployment and higher proportions of poorly educated residents. Finally, the study demonstrates that academic assortative matching has a positive relationship with labour market income returns, at least at early ages. Overall, the findings of this thesis establish that educational aspirations and choices are influenced by background factors in addition to individual ability and that they are, to a large extent, socially graded. The implications drawn from this research should be important for every policy maker, social scientist, teacher and parent interested in social mobility and equality of opportunity. ii Acknowledgements It takes a village to complete a doctoral dissertation. Endless effort trying to make sense of the data and writing the text over and over. During the past four years, I realised just how vast my support network is. Coming to the end of this long journey, I would like to take this as an opportunity to express my sincere gratitude to all those who were by my side. First and foremost, I am deeply indebted to my supervisor, Steven McIntosh, for his invaluable guidance and thoughtful insights, but also for his encouragement, unwavering support, patience and deep understanding during these four years. I would also like to express my utmost sincere gratitude to my second supervisor, Andrew P Dickerson, for his meticulous comments, for keeping me motivated with his never-ending excitement about economics and for teaching me how ideas develop. Steve and Andy, I owe my knowledge in the Economics of Education to you. It has been an honour and a privilege to have been your student. I would also like to thank you for the invaluable support in helping me secure a research position after completing my PhD. In addition, I would like to thank Matt Dickson and Mark Bryan for helpful discussion and comments at my thesis defence. Many thanks to Sandra McNally for her useful comments and feedback as well as all the other CVER members I have had the pleasure of meeting. The financial support received from the Department of Education, through CVER, in the form of a PhD studentship is also gratefully acknowledged. I am also grateful to all the academic and support staff in the Department of Economics for all their help and continual support throughout this journey. I am particularly thankful to Arne Risa Hole for his useful guidance in coding, Gurleen Popli who gave me the opportunity to further my research experience and Panos Nanos for his encouragement and career advice. I extend my thanks to all my fellows, both past and present, whom made this journey particularly pleasant. I am especially grateful to Christiana Anaxagorou for always reminding me that there is a light at the end of the tunnel, Bertha Rohenkohl for our interesting conversations and Maria Petrillo, who I only met in my final year but provided me with invaluable support and heartfelt friendship. I am always grateful to my family; my admirable mother Elena, my beloved father Kiriakos and my sweetheart brother Christos, for always believing in me and for keeping me grounded with their unconditional love and unfaltering support. They walked the way iv with me sharing the peaks as well as the valleys. Last but by no means least, I am eternally grateful to all my wonderful friends and especially to my beloved girls, Christina, Maria, Vasilia and Aphrodite for always being there for me, picking up my pieces in my most troublesome days. I would also like to express my heartfelt gratitude to my favourite person, Danos, for making the end of this journey so much easier. None of what I have in the following pages would have been possible without all of you. v Notes and Disclaimers I hereby declare that the work in this thesis was carried out in accordance with the Regulations of the University of Sheffield. I certify that this thesis is solely my own work, unless clearly indicated otherwise. This thesis forms part of the work of the Centre for Vocational Education Research. CVER is an independent research centre funded by the UK Department for Education (DfE). For more details on the Centre, go to cver.lse.ac.uk. Any views expressed in this thesis are mine and do not represent the views of the DfE. Chapter 2 and Chapter 3 of this thesis are based on data collected from the Longitudinal Study of Young People in England (LSYPE) which has been produced by the Department for Education (DfE) and supplied by the Secure Data Service (SDS) at the UK Data Archive. The data are Crown Copyright and reproduced with the permission of the controller of HMSO and Queen's Printer for Scotland. The use of these data does not imply the endorsement of the data owner or the UK Data Service at the UK Data Archive in relation to the interpretation or analysis of the data. This work uses research datasets which may not exactly reproduce National Statistics aggregates. Chapter 4 of this thesis uses linked administrative data from schools and tax authorities in England. The data have been kindly matched and provided anonymised by officials at the DfE. An edited version of Chapter 3 has been jointly co-authored with my supervisors, Steven McIntosh and Andy Dickerson and has been published in CVER's Discussion Paper Series (CVER DP 017). vi Contents Abstract i Acknowledgements iv Notes and Disclaimers vi Table of Contents viii List of Tables xiii List of Figures xvi Chapter 1: Introduction1 1.1 Motivations and aims .............................. 1 1.1.1 Background and motivation....................... 1 1.1.2 Aims, research questions and contribution of this thesis....... 3 1.2 Institutional background............................. 6 1.3 Structure and content of this thesis....................... 9 1.3.1 Brief overview of Chapter 2....................... 9 1.3.2 Brief overview of Chapter 3....................... 10 1.3.3 Brief overview of Chapter 4....................... 10 1.3.4 Brief overview of Chapter 5....................... 11 Chapter 2: The changing influence of socio-economic background and ability on post-compulsory educational aspirations and choices 13 2.1 Introduction.................................... 13 2.1.1 Background and motivation....................... 13 2.1.2 Research question ............................ 14 2.1.3 Research findings and limitations.................... 15 2.1.4 Structure ................................. 16 2.2 Literature Review ...............................