Fixed-term jobs after vocational education and training in Switzerland: Stepping stone or impediment?

Competing assumptions about whether entering the labour market via fixed-term jobs is a good or bad start into work life persist in the literature. Based on the longitudinal survey TREE, this article sheds light on (1) who enters the Swiss labour market via fixed-term jobs after graduating from initial vocational education and on (2) the consequences regarding their future returns. Results indicate that vocational education graduates entering the work force via fixed-term jobs of low occupational status must expect lower future wages

Job and employment insecurity in early careers : investigating the vocational education premium

As school-to-work transitions are highly institutionalised for young people in countries with well-established vocational education and training (VET) systems, comparatively smooth transitions to work and hence low youth unemployment have become the hallmark of VET. Tertiarisation, globalisation and increased macro-economic uncertainties as well as shifts towards a more knowledge-intensive economy and educational expansion, however, pose new challenges for VET. Based on data from the unique, longitudinal survey TREE (Transitions from Education to Employment) that follows school-to-work transitions of pupils who participated in PISA 2000, this dissertation sheds light on early job and employment insecurities and their lasting effects for the careers of VET graduates in Switzerland. Five research articles form the main pillars of this dissertation. Empirical results highlight the sheltering impact of vocational education on early job insecurity. In case VET graduates happen to experience early unemployment and initial fixed-term employment, however, they face long-term career hampering consequences. Further, institutionalised pathways to work along occupational lines constrain occupational mobility for VET graduates. Results indicate that graduates from initial vocational education strongly depend on good job opportunities in their occupational segment of training as they otherwise lack a pathway to qualified employment. In addition, the last empirical investigation focuses on differential effects of subjective and objective job insecurity on life-satisfaction trajectories across educational categories

Putting an explanatory understanding into a predictive perspective: An exemplary study on school track enrollment

Complementing widely used explanatory models in the educational sciences that pinpoint the resources and characteristics for explaining students’ distinct educational transitions, this paper departs from methodological traditions and evaluates the predictive power of established concepts: to what extent can we actually predict school track enrollment based on a plethora of well-known explanatory factors derived from previous research? Predictive models were established using recursive partitioning adopted from machine learning. The basis for the analyses was the unique Zurich Learning Progress Study in Switzerland, a longitudinal study that followed a sample of 2000 students throughout compulsory education. This paper presents an exemplary examination of predictive modeling, and encourages educational sciences in general to explore beyond the horizon of their disciplinary methodological standards, which may help to consider the limits of an exclusive focus on explanatory approaches. The results provide an insight into the predictive capacity of well-established educational measures and concepts in predicting school track enrollment. The results show that there is quite a bit we cannot explain in educational navigation at the very end of elementary education. Yet, predictive misclassifications mainly occur between adjacent school tracks. Very few misclassifications in the future enrollment of academic-track and basic-track students, i.e., those pursuing the most- and least-prestigious tracks, respectively, occur

Long-term trajectories of academic performance in the context of social disparities: Longitudinal findings from Switzerland

This study used a stratified random sample of classes in Zurich, Switzerland, comprising approximately 2,000 students whose academic performances in math and language were assessed across primary and lower secondary education. Based on this longitudinal data, the study investigated the association of social inequalities with the baseline of, and gains in, academic performance. The study focused on growing social disparities in academic performance during compulsory education, taking into account disparities in the social backgrounds of students as well as in social deprivation of school attendance areas. The results of a multilevel growth curve analysis implemented to model academic performance development at student and school district levels suggest cumulative disadvantages for students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. These students (a) start school with lower initial knowledge and (b) experience lower improvements in academic performance. The findings also suggest that more advantaged school attendance areas achieved higher average performance levels in the early stages of primary education despite controlling for student socioeconomic backgrounds. On average, however, this gap in academic performance between more advantaged and more deprived attendance areas did not appear to widen over the subsequent years of compulsory schooling

Flexibility at the Price of Volatility: Concurrent Calibration in Multistage Tests in Practice Using a 2PL Model

Multistage test (MST) designs promise efficient student ability estimates, an indispensable asset for individual diagnostics in high-stakes educational assessments. In high-stakes testing, annually changing test forms are required because publicly known test items impair accurate student ability estimation, and items of bad model fit must be continually replaced to guarantee test quality. This requires a large and continually refreshed item pool as the basis for high-stakes MST. In practice, the calibration of newly developed items to feed annually changing tests is highly resource intensive. Piloting based on a representative sample of students is often not feasible, given that, for schools, participation in actual high-stakes assessments already requires considerable organizational effort. Hence, under practical constraints, the calibration of newly developed items may take place on the go in the form of a concurrent calibration in MST designs. Based on a simulation approach this paper focuses on the performance of Rasch vs. 2PL modeling in retrieving item parameters when items are for practical reasons non-optimally placed in multistage tests. Overall, the results suggest that the 2PL model performs worse in retrieving item parameters compared to the Rasch model when there is non-optimal item assembly in the MST; especially in retrieving parameters at the margins. The higher flexibility of 2PL modeling, where item discrimination is allowed to vary, seems to come at the cost of increased volatility in parameter estimation. Although the overall bias may be modest, single items can be affected by severe biases when using a 2PL model for item calibration in the context of non-optimal item placement

Job opportunities and school‑to‑work transitions in occupational labour markets. Are occupational change and unskilled employment after vocational education interrelated?

Background: This study links TREE panel data surveying school-to-work transitions in Switzerland with unique job advertising data from the Swiss Job Market Monitor that mirrors individual job opportunities. We investigate: (i) whether occupational change and unskilled entry level employment are two related transition outcomes among graduates from initial vocational education and training (IVET) in the occupational labour market of Switzerland. Our analysis further focuses on (ii) the impact of a low number of occupation-specific job opportunities on the risk of such a combined horizontal and vertical job-education mismatch, and (iii) the extent to which overall labour demand facilitates occupational changes to skilled employment. Methods: We make use of bivariate probit analysis to investigate occupational change and unskilled entry employment among IVET graduates as interrelated transition outcomes. Results: The empirical results suggest that occupational change and unskilled entry employment are two interrelated transition outcomes among IVET graduates in Switzerland. The results further support our hypothesis that a low number of occupation-specific job vacancies at labour market entry increase the risk of simultaneously experiencing both forms of job-education mismatches for IVET graduates. High overall labour demand enables occupational changes to skilled employment. Conclusions: We conclude that for an integration of IVET graduates into occupationally and educationally matching positions it is crucial that the IVET programmes offered match labour demand on an occupational basis