Concerns about the poor outcomes from school-based vocational education, which is heavily concentrated in schools serving disadvantaged communities, has led the State Government of Victoria, Australia, to implement major reforms, including abolishing the Victoria Certificate of Applied Learning. Instead, from 2023, learning in vocational education…

This paper looks at the flexibilisation of teachers' employment relations in England in the context of an accelerated deregulation of work and employment conditions and of educational provision. It brings to light a contrasted picture, where external flexibilisation, through the recruitment of unqualified teachers, seems to be contained by a…

In this study we investigate the educational attainment of the labour force in the United States. Our data analysis, based on Bureau of Labour Statistics data in more than 700 occupations, produced two important findings. First, we observed that the Overeducation Ratio (share of employees that are overeducated), which began to rise in the United…

This issue of "DataPoints" shows labor participation rates of people 25 years and older by professional certification and licensing status and education attainment in 2018. The data demonstrate that individuals with a certification or professional license have higher labor market participation rates.

To help students leave high school on a path toward success in the labor market, education policymakers and practitioners often focus on improving career and technical education (CTE) opportunities in high school. Understanding the alignment between high school CTE programs and the labor market is an important step in this process. To support CTE…

To help students leave high school on a path toward success in the labor market, education policymakers and practitioners often focus on improving career and technical education (CTE) opportunities in high school. This study quantifies the system-level alignment between West Virginia's high school CTE programs and the labor market. West Virginia…

We provide the first causal evidence of the returns to maternal educational curricula on offspring's health at birth. Educational programs that aim to deliver more general knowledge may potentially improve women's earning potential and maternal prenatal investment by increasing the portability of skills across occupations and improving women's…

Some countries have certifying institutions for competence acquired at the workplace. These institutions provide incentives for workplace training that may have favourable effects on productivity, earnings and labour market participation. We present evidence on the earnings effects of attaining vocational qualifications in adulthood through two…

This short description contributes to better understanding of vocational education and training (VET) in Slovenia. It provides insights into its main features and highlights system developments and current challenges. Slovenia has a strong VET tradition; participation at upper secondary level is the highest in the EU. The VET system in Slovenia is…

Apprenticeships for adults are one of the policy solutions to the need for supporting adults willing to train, while broadening the skills base of the working population across Europe. According to Cedefop estimates, there are around 128 million adults with potential for upskilling or reskilling in the European Union (EU). EU Member States have…

The European qualifications framework (EQF), with its eight levels, serves as a translation grid between qualifications acquired in different European countries. Part of Cedefop's work to make qualifications easier to understand and compare, this study takes a closer look at those acquired through initial VET and assigned to EQF levels 3 and 4 via…

This paper presents a comparative analysis of the effect of different educational orientations at the upper-secondary level on labour market outcomes across European countries. The study separates safety net effect and the diversion effect of Vocational Education and Training (VET). Using PIAAC data, we show cross-national differences in the early…

Concise, clear and comprehensive snapshots of vocational education and training systems in EU, Iceland and Norway: this is what the Cedefop Spotlight on VET series offers. Building on individual country Spotlights, this publication provides an overview of VET systems with their distinctive qualities, such as main accession and progression routes…

This report provides the main findings and results from the 2022 collection of statistics on education, skills and employment in the ETF's partner countries. In addition, it provides the results of some ETF new strands of work: youth transition and skills mismatch. A statistical snapshot enabling the EU's candidate countries to reference…

Did you know that close to half of today's jobs in the U.S. could be done by robots and that proportion is rapidly increasing? It is quite possible that about half of today's high school graduates will not have the knowledge or skills needed to get a decent job when they graduate. Tomorrow's high school graduates will be able to thrive in this…