This morning The Centre for Transforming Access and Student Outcomes in Higher Education (TASO), the What Works Centre for higher education published the first findings from our new research.
Together with our partners at State of Life, we conducted a large research project, securing access to the National Pupil Database and the new Longitudinal Educational Outcomes (LEO) dataset, to track more than a million young people through school, further education, higher education and into the labour market.
This research, and the new dataset we produced, allows exciting new insights around the impact of different educational pathways on future earnings and employment rates. Specifically, we tracked two cohorts of Key Stage 4 pupils through to their labour market outcomes 9 and 16 years after GCSEs, taking us up to when they were in their early 30s.
As TASO highlight, our research reveals that:
- Those with higher levels of education tend to earn more, with a particularly large earnings premium for graduates from top third universities (see chart below)
- While higher education has labour market benefits for all groups, gaps between groups are persistent, with large gender and disadvantage gaps even among university graduates
- Higher level further education (FE) courses were associated with strong earnings and employment rates, comparable to those from non-top third universities for some groups
The TASO report provides some initial top level findings from our analysis; however, over the coming weeks we will be sharing new insights from the analysis we produced, including:
- The causes and consequences of the rapid growth of the gender pay gap between mid-20s and early-30s
- How outcomes at Key Stage 4 ‘lock in’ future earnings and employment
- Gender differences in the labour market returns from apprenticeships
And much more. We know the analysis published today, and the dataset we have produced, will provide a much deeper understanding of post-16 education pathways for different groups of students across the country – helping policy makers and researchers, as well as young people and their parents/carers, to make more informed decisions.
As well as sharing more insights from the data published today, we also plan to return to the LEO dataset in future to uncover more detailed insights, including the impact of degree classification, subject choice and industry on labour market outcomes. So watch this space and get in touch to discuss labour market outcomes or this new research – or if you are interested in partnering with us for a deeper dive into LEO data.
Get in touch if you would like to discuss more!
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