Centre for the Economics of Education Annual Report
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C E E CENTRE FOR THE ECONOMICS OF EDUCATION ANNUAL REPORT 2000-2001 1 ANNUAL REVIEW 2000-2001 INTRODUCTION 3 OBJECTIVES 5 RESEARCH PROGRAMME 5 · METHODOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENTS 7 · THE PRODUCTION OF EDUCATION AND SKILLS 10 · THE SUPPLY OF EDUCATION AND SKILLS 14 · THE DEMAND FOR EDUCATION AND SKILLS 17 · THE RETURNS TO EDUCATION AND SKILLS 20 ANNEXES Annex A Staff List 22 Annex B Publications 23 Annex C Discussion Paper Series 28 Annex D Centre Seminars 30 Annex E Forthcoming Events – Seminars and Conferences 31 REFERENCES 33 2 INTRODUCTION This report covers the first year of the Centre for the Economics of Education (CEE). The Centre was set up in March 2000 and is funded by the Department for Education and Employment (DfEE) and consists of researchers affiliated with the Centre for Economic Performance (CEP) at the London School of Economics, the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) and the Institute of Education (IoE). The formation of the Centre represents a major advance in the analysis of the economics of education as it brings together both economists and educationalists in a structured environment. This union provides the capability and capacity to undertake rigorous academic research on the economics of education: something that has, at least in recent years, suffered from being undertaken in a very piecemeal manner. In addition to core DfEE funding, individual researchers from the Centre have obtained additional funding from the DfEE to produce several comprehensive reports relating to resource allocation and pupil attainment and the returns to education and qualifications, both on a microeconomic and macroeconomic level, and CEE members are involved in evaluations of the Education Maintenance Allowance (EMA), Excellence in Cities (EiC) and the New Deal. Additional related research has been undertaken by CEE researchers for other government departments and funding organisations, including the Home Office, the Department of Social Security, the Economic and Social Research Council, Qualifications and Curriculum Authority and at European level, CEDEFOP (European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training). The Centre is directed by Professor Stephen Machin (University College London and the Centre for Economic Performance, LSE) and has a research programme, which is subdivided into five strands, each with a dedicated strand leader overseeing all work undertaken in that area. The Centre has pulled together a set of leading researchers (see Annex A of the Appendix for a staff list) who work on the economics of education (a list of recent external publications is provided in Annex B of the Appendix). The specific strands of research and the research leaders are as follows: Methodological Developments: Strand Leader: Professor Costas Meghir, University College London and Institute for Fiscal Studies The Production of Education and Skills: Strand Leader: Professor Peter Dolton, University of Newcastle and Institute of Education The Supply of Education and Skills: Strand Leader: Dr. Anna Vignoles, Centre for Economic Performance 3 The Demand for Education and Skills: Strand Leader: Professor Alison Wolf, Institute of Education The Returns to Education and Skills: Strand Leader: Dr Lorraine Dearden, Institute for Fiscal Studies In the first year of the Centre, substantial progress has been made and/or proposed in all strands. Some of the research work has taken the form of preparatory work for the longer- term research aims of the Centre; however, the major difficulty in much of our work has been associated with the lack of suitable data and thus this report places emphasis on our efforts to build a methodological infrastructure for the analysis of the available data rather than on actual results that have been achieved to date. Nonetheless, there have been several areas where substantial progress has been made and some of the research has progressed far enough to be circulated for wider comment through a discussion paper series (see Annex C of the Appendix). It is one of the aims of the Centre that the work undertaken by its researchers should have as wide a circulation as possible amongst academics, policymakers and practitioners alike. This has been achieved through the creation of the discussion paper series and additional collaboration with the DfEE specifically for the dissemination of the research work. With this aim in mind, there has also been the creation of a dedicated Centre website which allows all material produced to be freely accessible in electronic format. In addition to the research and conference participation by CEE members, there has been an active and well-attended seminar series that was set up at the inception of the CEE, as well as several special events and conference papers aimed at highlighting the creation of the Centre and disseminating its research more widely. These are more fully detailed later on in this report (Annex D of the Appendix reports on the seminars already held). The Centre has produced a sufficiently large body of work with the result that a well publicised discussion paper series has been initiated and three international conferences over the next two years relating to educational choice, school effectiveness and the returns to education are currently being organised (See Annex E of the Appendix). Building up our knowledge base on the cost effectiveness of various educational interventions and investments and making these research findings more accessible to policy- makers and practitioners remains one of the key objectives of the Centre. To this end, the Centre will not just disseminate its findings in top quality academic journals, although this is an important means of maintaining rigorous research standards. Rather, the Centre has created a clear dissemination strategy. The strategy is focused on both presenting and interpreting evidence to interested parties, such as policy-makers and practitioners, the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) and the Qualification and Curriculum Authority (QCA). We have held various seminars and conference events (see Annex C below) and have used the Centre for Economic Performance’s highly successful Public Affairs Unit to promote our findings. In these efforts, we seek to ensure that our research work reaches our intended audience. An integral part of the CEE’s work plan is to bring on and develop junior researchers and doctoral students (aided by additional funding from the DfEE). The core funding received from the DfEE has been vital to this intended aim so that we have been able to maintain a set of trained researchers (for periods longer than on a grant by grant basis). This continuity should enhance the human capital of such researchers and raise the quality of future research work produced by the Centre. 4 The Centre has benefited from being multi-disciplinary in its approach. Additionally, collaboration with the Centre on the Wider Benefits of Learning (the other DfEE research Centre established at the same time as the CEE) has been essential to the overall success of the research agenda of the DfEE. For instance, any evaluation of the costs and benefits of ‘life-long learning’ needs to involve both Centres in order to a) more effectively identify and evaluate the effects of life long learning and b) to avoid duplication and unnecessary data costs. This collaboration has been crucial for the success of both Centres and will ensure that the DfEE continues to have a fully integrated programme of research to inform policy- making. We believe that the Centre is core to the long-term academic research agenda on the economics of education in the United Kingdom and that our work is already starting to achieve the original aims of the policymakers that funded the Centre as well as the researchers that contribute to the work. We now look at the Centre’s core objectives and how we have researched these, project by project, before turning to our plans for the coming year. OBJECTIVES: THE RESEARCH PROGRAMME Participation in different forms of post-secondary education, policies to improve the quality of schooling, pre-school education, improving responsiveness to the labour market among young people, evaluating skill needs and accurately estimating the wage returns to education are issues (amongst others) that have been the focus of systematic analysis by the Centre’s researchers. Despite the fact that there already exists a substantial amount of evidence on the benefits of certain educational interventions and investments, there remains a pressing need to assess educational interventions/investments in terms of their ‘value for money’, taking into account both the costs and benefits. For example, while we know a great deal about the impact of higher education on pupils’ subsequent earnings, we have only recently presented robust estimates of the economic returns to qualifications gained in further education (Skills Task Force Research Paper 27 and CEE Discussion Paper 4). The opportunity of bringing together economists and educationalists is being used to apply modern econometric techniques and new methodologies to the field of education policy yielding strong results, which we can build upon in the future. STRANDS We initially proposed that the new Centre, drawing on the extensive expertise of researchers from all three of the partner institutions, would undertake a wide range of projects. In conceptualising the organisation of the Centre, and in identifying immediate research priorities, we commenced with an overall picture of the subject area. From an economic perspective, education systems are seen primarily as systems of production, but ones in which both the key considerations of policy are critical – namely efficiency and equity. Within this general perspective, several major themes or sets of questions emerged. The first concerns the efficiency with which the system carries out its current operations, i.e. The Production of Education and Skills (Strand 2). Given a prior definition of the skills and educational outcomes that the society desires, how efficient is the internal organisation of the system? 5 Three other themes relate to the wider environment in which a given education system operates.