Self-Selection into Teaching: The Role of Teacher Education Institutions

Good teachers are critical for a high-quality educational system. This in turns leads to the question of who is interested in going into the teaching profession. Although research has been done on the professional careers of teachers, the issue of self-selection into teacher education has been mostly overlooked until now. The analyses contained in our study are based on a representative sampling of over 1500 high-school students in Switzerland shortly before graduation. The findings indicate that there is a self-selection process with regard to courses of study at teaching training institutions, which is reinforced by institutional and structural characteristics of the types of higher education institutions and the courses of study they offer. This can clearly be seen in comparison with high-school students preparing to study at another type of higher educational institution (university). Accordingly, the findings of this paper tend to indicate that the choices made by future teachers depend to a large extent also on where and how teachers are trained.teacher education, teacher training, teacher education colleges, self-selection, v

Apprenticeship training in England: a cost-effective model for firms?

In England, the government plans to incentivise spending of billions of pounds over the next few years promoting apprenticeships, with most of the finance raised from the apprenticeship levy on employers. Promoting more apprenticeships is designed to improve England’s skill base – a government policy priority given the relatively low level of skills and educational qualifications amongst a large part of the country’s workforce. But does such a policy make sense in an English context, with a historically limited participation of many employers in work related formal training? Is additional spending on apprenticeships likely to lead to positive economic returns for employers, workers and for England itself? And how varied are the net economic returns by employer and by sector? What works for one category of employment may not bring positive gains where returns to training are much lower. To answer these questions the JPMorgan Chase Foundation, the Education Policy Institute and the Bertelsmann Stiftung have come together and partnered with the internationally acknowledged economist Prof. Dr. Stefan C. Wolter to explore the costs and benefits of apprenticeship training for companies in England. This report by Prof. Dr. Stefan C. Wolter and Eva Joho brings a much needed degree of rigour and quantification to a policy area which is too often characterised by assumption, hunch, and international experience which may not apply in a very different country context. The authors have used evidence from Germany, Switzerland and Austria to simulate the costs and benefits of an apprenticeship policy applied in an English context. They are aware of the limitations of this approach - not least given the different tradition of employer engagement in England - but the analysis in this report is important and could help guide employer and government policies in directions that maximise economic returns and limit low return scenarios. In particular, the return by occupations is shown to be highly varied based on the return and cost characteristics of each sector. The returns by employer within each sector also vary markedly. The key conclusions the authors have derived in the report could help steer English policymakers and employers in more evidence based directions, which should help ensure that England’s large investment in this area is properly informed by evidence and more likely to yield positive returns. In addition, the present study complements studies with a similar methodology in Spain (2016) and Italy (to be published 2018), which will enable learnings for successful implementation of apprenticeship models across countries

The economics of apprenticeship training: Seven lessons learned from cost-benefit surveys and simulations

This text summarises the seven most important findings that have been gleaned using detailed cost-benefit surveys of apprenticeship training programmes in various countries and subsequent cost-benefit simulations for other countries over the last 20 years. The costs incurred by the firms providing training were measured, as were the benefits they can generate in the short term through the apprentices’ work in the company and the medium- term benefits obtained because apprenticeship programs help companies avoid costly recruitment from the labour market. These surveys and simulations mainly concern European countries. However, they have also been applied to non-European countries.1 Specifically, the following statements refer to cost-benefit surveys from Switzerland, Germany and Austria and cost-benefit simulations run for England, Italy and Spain. The cost-benefit measurements in the three German- speaking countries were also used for comparative studies, i.e. studies that investigated the causes and effects of the differences in the costs and benefits of apprenticeship training in the three countries (see point 2). The findings we draw from the cost-benefit measurements and the corresponding simulations are summarized in seven lesson

Apprenticeship training in Italy: a cost-effective model for firms?

In times of rapid technological progress and increasing digitalisation in many areas of work and life, it is more important than ever to provide young people with the best possible skills for their entry into the world of work. It is certainly important to provide them with a solid theoretical knowledge base. However, it is also important to impart practical skills to ensure that they are able to adapt to the needs of the labour market. Post-school education in Italy, while providing good formal skills in this respect, is not sufficiently responsive to the needs of the labour market. With this in mind, dual training models have become politically more attractive in Italy and are already being implemented. But despite political support and the reforms in recent years, the popularity of dual training models has hardly increased. From an international point of view, this development is hardly surprising. On the one hand, interest in dual vocational training is increasing: learning a trade at two locations – in a company and at a part-time vocational school – means that apprentices gain valuable professional experience while they are still training, which enables a smoother transition to the labour market. As a result, there is less youth unemployment and a better supply of skilled labour for industry. On the other hand, reforms of this kind often encounter a major obstacle when it comes to practical implementation: a lack of commitment by the companies, especially in countries where an in-company apprenticeship tradition is absent. First and foremost, companies see training as an operational loss: why pay to train an apprentice when qualified employees can be recruited directly on the labour market? What businesses often fail to see is that in-house training does not merely incur costs, but that it also results in monetary benefits, and sometimes in net profits before training has even been completed. However, the question is: under which conditions? The costs and benefits of training are not invariables, they depend on a wide of variety of parameters such as the level of apprentices’ pay, the industry in question, the duration of training, recruiting costs for qualified skilled workers on the labour market – not to mention the quality of the training course. To examine the situation, this study uses simulations to investigate how these parameters would have to be designed in Italy in order to make dual training more attractive for Italian businesses. The conclusions derived in this report are intended to assist Italian policymakers and employers to make more evidence-based decisions, to ensure that Italy’s labour force investments are more likely to yield positive returns

The Consequences of Being Different - Statistical Discrimination and the School-to-Work Transition

When information about the true abilities of job-seekers and applicants are hard to get, statistical discrimination by employers can be an efficient strategy in the hiring and wage setting process. But statistical discrimination can induce costs, if labor relations cannot be terminated in the short term and wages are fixed over a certain period. In this paper we use a unique longitudinal survey that follows the PISA 2000 students in their educational and work-life career. We test whether deviance in the PISA test scores from what one would have predicted based on observable characteristics, influences the probability to succeed in the transition from compulsory school into a firm-based apprenticeship and whether it can explain differences of the individual performances during training. Our results suggest that hard-to-get information plays a significant role in the transition, but not always in a symmetric manner.statistical discrimination, school-to-work transition, PISA

Are the Elderly a Threat to Educational Expenditures?

Empirical research has given cause to fear that the demographic ageing in industrialized countries is likely to exert a negative impact on educational spending. These papers have linked the share of the elderly with the per capita or per pupil spending on education at the local, state-wide or national level, trying to control for other exogenous effects. Although this line of research shows in many cases a negative correlation between the shares of elderly people and educational expenditures, a causal link is difficult to prove. This paper uses a unique and representative survey of Swiss voters of all age groups. The analysis shows that elderly people present a clear tendency to be less willing to spend money on education. They would rather prefer to spend public resources on health and social security than on education. Furthermore the paper shows that much of the negative correlation between the shares of elderly and educational spending is the result of the elderly being politically more conservative and in general less inclined to pay for expenditures in the public sector as a whole.public finance, education finance, demographics, survey, Switzerland

Demographic Change and Public Education Spending: A Conflict between Young and Old?

Demographic change in industrial countries will influence educational spending in potentially two ways. On the one hand, the decline in the number of school-age children should alleviate the financial pressure. On the other hand, the theoretical/empirical literature has established that the concomitantly increasing proportion of elderly in the population can influence the propensity of politicians to spend on education. Using a panel of the Swiss Cantons for the period from 1990 to 2002, we find that the education system has exhibited little elasticity in adjusting to changes in the school-age population, and that the share of the elderly population has a significantly negative influence on the willingness to spend on public education.public finance, education finance, demographics, panel estimates, Switzerland

Regional Effects on Employer Provided Training: Evidence from Apprenticeship Training in Switzerland

This paper uses regional variation in labor markets, the industry structure and the educational system to explain the training decisions of firms. Using a representative firm-level data set, the results show that firms are less likely to offer training if the number of competing firms situated in the same geographical area is high. Furthermore, the supply of potential apprentices affects the training decision positively through an improved matching process. In addition, the expected ability of apprentices also has a positive impact, whereas a more developed system of full-time schooling options for school leavers reduces the likelihood of a firm to offer training.apprenticeship training, regional labor markets

Regional effects on employer-provided training: Evidence fromapprenticeship training in Switzerland

"This paper uses regional variation in labor markets, the industry structure and the education system to explain the training decisions of firms. Using a representative firmlevel data set, the results show that firms are less likely to provide training if the number of competing firms situated in the same geographical area is high. Furthermore, the supply of potential apprentices affects the training decision positively through an improved matching process. In addition, the expected ability of apprentices also has a positive impact, whereas a more developed system of full-time schooling options for young people who have completed their compulsory schooling reduces the likelihood of a firm providing training." (Author's abstract, IAB-Doku) ((en)) Additional Information Kurzfassung (deutsch) Executive summary (English)Betrieb, Ausbildungsverhalten, betriebliche Berufsausbildung, regionale Disparität, regionale Faktoren, regionaler Arbeitsmarkt, Wirtschaftsstruktur, Wettbewerb, Berufsbildungssystem, duales System, schulische Berufsausbildung, Personalpolitik, Bildungsökonomie, Schweiz

Money Matters - Evidence from a Large-Scale Randomized Field Experiment with Vouchers for Adult Training

This paper presents the results of a randomized experiment analyzing the use of vouchers for adult training. In 2006, 2,400 people were issued with a training voucher which they were entitled to use in payment for a training course of their choice. User behavior was compared with a control group of 14,000 people. People in the treatment and in the control group were not aware at any time that they were part of an experiment. The experiment shows that the voucher had a significant causal impact on participation in training modules. Nevertheless, the increase was partially offset by a deadweight loss in excess of fifty percent.field experiment, voucher, adult education, training, Switzerland