Skills development is critical to South Africa's development. It has been argued that South Africa's twin post-Apartheid challenges, poverty and unemployment requires a level of skills development not undertaken before (RSA, 2008a; ANC, 2007). The creation of a separate ministry, the department of higher education and training (DHET), which has…

Informatics education is in a special situation. The greatest and quickest changes in technology and content might be in this field. That is why it is a very important question what and how to teach on different education levels. What are the requirements of the European labour market? What trends can be recognized in the field of public…

How well do our education policies prepare America's youth for the labor market? What challenges limit our success, and what opportunities do we have for improvements? Can public policy play a greater role in encouraging more success? In this chapter, I provide a summary of what we know on these issues, incorporating but also complementing…

We use a representative sample of Italian graduates drawn from the Consorzio AlmaLaurea to assess the impact of individual and family characteristics, university inputs and the labour market on the time taken to attain a degree. Our estimates highlight that all these dimensions drive the outcome analysed. Weak labour market prospects contribute…

The last student enrolled in a pure "Botany" degree in the UK began in the University of Bristol this year, 2010. In recent years only the University of Reading also offered the Botany degree, before it was dropped there 3 years ago. This short article is written to draw attention to this fact and to a more general relative decline in…

While much stratification research has focused on understanding the patterns and consequences of differentiation, previous studies have not considered similarly important variation in students' trajectories through higher education, and particularly their participation in the labor market. Results from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth of…

"Education Indicators in Focus" is a recurring series of briefs that highlight specific indicators in "OECD's Education at a Glance" that are of particular interest to policy makers and practitioners. They provide a detailed look into current issues in pre-primary, primary and secondary education, higher education, and adult outcomes from a global…

The author of this review begins with a declaration of interest--more than a decade and a half ago he, along with Alison Wolf and 13 other researchers, signed a letter to the "Financial Times" protesting at design flaws in National Vocational Qualifications (NVQs). Their missive provoked a grumpy response from the then National Council…

In this paper we explore how the "employable" student and "ideal" future creative worker is prefigured, constructed and experienced through higher education work placements in the creative sector, based on a recent small-scale qualitative study. Drawing on interview data with students, staff and employers, we identify the…

Level descriptors are essential elements of national qualifications frameworks being established across Europe. They define what is meant by learning outcomes, describing what an individual is expected to know, be able to do and understand, having acquired a qualification at a particular level. This Cedefop working paper shows that most of the 36…

This briefing examines training and development (T&D) in Quebec, one of 10 provinces and three territories that make up Canada. Quebec has three distinguishing characteristics that encourage analysis of its T&D separately from that of Canada as a whole. First, it is the only North American region with a majority francophone population.…

A growing body of work suggests that education offers a wide-range of benefits that extend beyond increases in labor market productivity. Improvements in education can lower crime, improve health, and increase voting and democratic participation. This chapter reviews recent developments on these "non-production" benefits of education with an…

This article examines reasons why teachers who were identified by their school principal as leaders or having leadership potential, chose not to become school principals. While the literature reports a shortage of qualified applicants for school administrative positions, the deterrents that teacher leaders most often identify include…

Western governments have emphasized paid work as a key route to social inclusion for disabled people. Although the proportion of disabled people in "mainstream" employment has increased in recent decades, rates remain significantly below those for non-disabled people. Moreover, disabled workers continue to face discrimination and a lack of…

One quarter of the 1958 British Birth cohort attended single-sex secondary schools. This paper asks whether sex-segregated schooling had any impact on the experience of gender differences in the labour market in mid-life. We examine outcomes at age 42, allowing for socio-economic origins and abilities measured in childhood. We find no net impact…