Construction of standardised variables on income from gainful occupation for the TREE1 cohort

This paper documents the construction of composite variables on income from gainful occupation (salaries from employment and earnings from self-employment) pertaining to the respondents of the TREE (Transitions from Education to Employment) panel survey’s first cohort (TREE1). The paper describes the data and the assumptions that underlie the construction of the composite variables. Its objective is to provide TREE data users with ready-to-use information on respondents’ income from gainful occupation that are consistent, methodologically “state of the art” and comparable across survey waves. The variables will be included in the next TREE1 data release, which is scheduled for 2023. Until then, the new salary composite variables are available to data users upon request. The Stata code used to generate the variables is included in this paper as an appendix

Educational Pathways of the Second Generation. What Kind of Determinism in Lower Secondary Educational Tracking and How Some Youngsters Overcome It?

Le destin éducatif de la nouvelle seconde génération en Suisse semble tracé. Ces jeunes sont orientés au sein des filières à exigences élémentaires ou étendues du secondaire I et ils obtiennent majoritairement des certificats professionnels. Cependant, à milieu social, type de filière et compétence scolaire égaux, ils sont plus nombreux que les natifs à emprunter les trajectoires de mobilité ascendante, menant à des formations générales de niveau secondaire ou tertiaire. L’analyse d’entretiens de jeunes albanophones originaires d’ex-Yougoslavie montre l’impact des aspirations élevées des jeunes et des familles, mais aussi l’importance de l’acquisition et de l’accès de ressources et informations clés qui permettent une mobilité ascendante.Das Bildungsschicksal der neuen zweiten Generation in der Schweiz scheint besiegelt zu sein. Diese Jugendlichen werden in der Sekundarstufe I auf Schulgänge mit niedrigeren Niveaustufen orientiert (mit Grund- oder erweiterten Ansprüchen) und erhalten dadurch meistens einen Berufsbildungsabschluss. Bei gleichem sozialem Hintergrund, Ausbildungsgang und schulischen Resultaten weisen diese Jugendlichen gegenüber Einheimischen jedoch öfters aufsteigende Ausbildungsgänge auf, welche zu allgemeinen Ausbildungen auf sekundärer oder tertiärer Ebene führen. Die Analyse von Interviews von Jugendlichen mit Herkunft aus Exjugoslawien zeigt die Bedeutung der hohen Erwartungshaltung der Jugendlichen und ihrer Familien, aber auch des Zugangs zu Ressourcen und Schlüsselinformationen, für eine aufsteigende Mobilität.The educational fate of the new second generation in Switzerland seems to be clearly determined. Youths of the new second generation tend to get directed towards low educational tracks by the end of compulsory school (lower secondary), and most of them acquire a vocational degree. However – social backgrounds, educational tracks and academic performances being equal – the new second-generation youths are more frequently than Swiss natives on an upward mobility path which leads to a general education at a secondary or tertiary level. The analysis of interviews with Albanians from the former Yugoslavia shows the impact of high educational aspirations of young people and their families, but also the importance of acquiring and having access to key resources and information that allow upward mobility

Data from the Swiss TREE Panel Study (Transitions from Education to Employment)

TREE (Transitions from Education to Employment) is a prospective inter-disciplinary mixed-mode panel study following up on post-compulsory education and employment trajectories of two Swiss compulsory school leavers’ cohorts: TREE1 was launched as a PISA follow-up survey in 2000 (nt0 = 6343, nt10 in 2020 = 3882). TREE2 started in 2016 and draws on a national large-scale assessment of mathematics skills (nt0 = 8429, nt6 in 2022 = 4461). The panel is ongoing, further panel waves being planned for both cohorts. Data from both cohorts are available at the Swiss data archive SWISSUbase

Educational Aspirations of Migrant Parents and the Relationship With Educational Success

Adding to the strand of research which shows that when taking into account accumulated disadvantages, descendants from migrant families succeed to a higher amount in education than natives, this paper analyses if and how parental educational aspirations act as a protective factor for educational success. Based on the Swiss longitudinal TREE data (Transition from Education to Employment, n= 7,971) of the second cohort we answer this question using a multinomial logistic regression analysis. Our results show that some migrant groups have higher parental aspirations and that these aspirations serve as a pushing factor for several second-generation groups to take up higher education at upper secondary level. To have a closer look at the underlying mechanisms we assess the definition of success by taking into account qualitative data chosen by a criterial-based sample of TREE respondents. The inductive definition of success, based on a content analysis with n=119 young adults and their parents from migrant and Swiss families will add to the existing theoretical reflection on the narrow definition of success and its interplay with parental aspirations

Parental Investment in Children’s Education. A TREE2 mixed methods study. Technical Report

PICE is an in-depth study of TREE that deals with the educational pathways of young adults and is particularly interested in how they are accompanied by their families on their way to professional life: PICE analyses what educational aspirations young people in Switzerland have and how they are supported by their parents. This technical report provides an overview of the theoretical framework of PICE, the research questions, and the study design of the mixed method study PICE: It documents the data collection and processing, the structure of the data, and the relationship to the TREE study (Transitions from Education to Employment)

TREE2 Results: The First Two Years

It has been five years since TREE’s second school leavers’ cohort (TREE2) was launched, thus ex-tending the study towards a replicative multi-cohort design. In early 2021, data from TREE2’s baseline survey (2016) and panel waves 1 and 2 (2017/2018) were published for the use by the scien-tific community. The findings of the present paper draw on this data release, thereby providing an initial overview of mostly descriptive results pertaining to the cohort’s crucial transition from lower to upper-secondary education. Beyond the most salient descriptive results of the cohort’s trajectories in its first two post-compulsory years, the paper provides a synoptic comparison with the first TREE cohort (TREE1), which made the same transition 16 years earlier (2000-2002). In a second step, descriptive findings are complemented by multivariate analyses which aim at disclosing major mechanisms underlying this crucial transition in adolescents’ educational pathways. In doing so, a particular focus lies on the role of skills, achievement and the pronounced tracking at the lower-secondary level of education that characterises the Swiss education system. The paper concludes with a summary and an outlook on further research questions raised by our first findings

Résultats de TREE2: Les deux premières années. Transitions de l’Ecole à l’Emploi. Cohorte 2 (TREE2)

L’enquête longitudinale auprès de la deuxième cohorte TREE (TREE2) a été lancée en 2016. Grâce à un design de réplication élargi, TREE a pu se transformer en étude comparative multicohortes. Début 2021, les données issues de l’enquête de départ TREE2 (2016) et des vagues de suivi 1 et 2 (2017/2018) ont été publiées à l’intention de la communauté scientifique. Les résultats de la présente publication s’appuient sur cet ouvrage, offrant ainsi un premier aperçu de quelques résultats pertinents sur la transition de cette cohorte entre la fin de la scolarité obligatoire (degré secondaire I) et les formations post-obligatoires (degré secondaire II). En plus des principaux résultats sur les parcours descriptifs de la cohorte durant les deux premières années suivant la scolarité obligatoire, ce papier propose une comparaison synoptique avec la pre-mière cohorte TREE (TREE1), qui a effectué la même transition seize ans plus tôt (2000-2002). Dans un deuxième temps, les résultats descriptifs sont complétés par des analyses multivariées des principaux mécanismes qui sous-tendent cette transition décisive dans le parcours formatif des jeunes en Suisse. Cette étude met l’accent sur le rôle des performances et le « tracking » caractéristique du système éducatif suisse au degré secondaire I. Cet écrit se termine par un résumé et une mise en perspective orientée vers d’autres questions de recherche découlant de nos premiers résultats

The effect of the socioeconomic status of ethnic groups on educational inequalities in Switzerland ::which "hidden" mechanisms ?

Socioeconomic status (SES) is one of the major explanatory factors of educational inequalities between ethnic groups. Nevertheless, this relation has rarely been explored in detail, taking into account educational trajectories instead of educational attainment. What is the impact of the SES of ethnic groups on educational trajectories? And by which “hidden mechanisms” SES background concretely influences the educational trajectories of youths? Based on the “Transition from education to employment” (TREE) longitudinal database in Switzerland, we propose a typology of post-compulsory educational pathways and we observe the impact of SES on the odds of taking a given path. Our analysis shows that, compared to other ethnic groups, second-generation from former- Yugoslavia, Portugal and Turkey are overrepresented in vocational and more problematic pathways mainly because of their low SES, but not exclusively. In addition, we conducted 50 biographical interviews with children of Albanianspeaking immigrants. We identified the fact that the SES effect is often nested with other negative factors related to the family, such as a precarious legal status, difficult living conditions, a lack of linguistic and social capital, etc. and related to the educational system that selects students into different tracks, constraints educational opportunities and reproduces educational inequalities