The study of social mobility can be traced back around 100 years, but up until the turn of the millennium it remained largely an academic topic. While a few seminal papers on income mobility had been published in the 1990s, the Sutton Trust's 2005 report, 'Intergenerational Mobility in Europe and North America' signalled a new wave of social…

This interim report shares emerging findings and recommendations from a collaborative project. The project examines post-16 Education and Training (E&T) in the UK. It is focused on analysing the divergent approaches to E&T policy across the four devolved nations to understand more deeply the key policy issues and challenges facing E&T…

This paper revisits the relationship between human capital and income inequality, using an updated data set on human capital inequality and a novel database on earnings inequality. We find an inverted U-shaped relationship between these two inequality indicators, but with significant differences across countries regarding the turning point.…

When a pronounced taste for science leads researchers to self-select themselves in academia, higher education systems must be able to protect it. By relying on the economic theory of higher education, the international mobility and the sociology of science literature, we compare the working condition in the four major European higher education…

We present new estimates of the internal rate of return to early childhood education. Utilizing the nationwide expansion of preschool education in Japan between 1960 and 1980, we initially assess the impact of preschool attendance on high school graduation and college enrollment for men. Subsequently, we compute the social rate of return to…

Wages below the living wage are poverty wages for many households. For decades, teachers have been clear about the damaging impact poverty has on childhood development in particular, as well as on individuals and communities as a whole. Teachers experience first-hand the impact that poverty has on children, how it leaves children more vulnerable…

We use vocational training curricula to investigate how IT skills are trained within broader "skills packages" and how these relate to labour market outcomes. Skills packages are the typical combinations of IT skills (e.g., CNC) and technical or nontechnical skills (e.g., material sciences or work safety) that are jointly required in the…

The education-based NGO sector in India is a large sector and it depends on activities of learning, training and motivation to sustain its underpaid and overworked workers. I articulate a theoretical perspective on the 'learning activity' in these workplaces using ideas of Engeström and Freire, I focus and problematise the discourse of empowerment…

The paper empirically examines labor-management communication concerning in-house training programs and its relation to the actual on- and off-the-job training policy and wage structure. Using governmental datasets from Japan, we study how different labor-management communication institutions may affect the training interests of employers and…

This paper explores a framework of family ecological theory for overcoming the challenges facing family childcare educators (FCC educators), who care for small groups of children in their own home. Pathways to overcoming these barriers through an ecological approach will be outlined by critically examining current research on these challenges. In…

In this paper we aim to understand how the discourse of VET stakeholders (educational administrators, school leaders and vocational teachers) reproduces and/or contests gender-typical occupational practices in VET. Drawing from interviews with VET stakeholders in Estonia, we found that, as a rule, teachers and heads of schools have noticed gender…

A central challenge for local skills strategies is whether they can contribute to 'inclusive growth' including more and better jobs across a local economy. Skills strategies, it has been argued, must go beyond simply boosting skills supply and be integrated with policies that shape employer demand for, and utilisation of, skills, including…

This paper engages with current debate on the role of the university following COVID-19, exposing the ongoing corruption of traditional values of the tertiary sector, and the shift in teaching and learning expectations across the academy. It highlights the negative impact of the huge decline in government funding since the 1990s, salary inequity,…

This brief analyzes the latest higher education data and government wage statistics to examine the number of unpaid graduate interns in the United Kingdom and the cost to an individual of doing an unpaid internship. It also includes newly published Ipsos Mori polling on attitudes to unpaid internships. Key findings in this brief include: (1) 31%…

Every year, the BC Student Outcomes Program collects feedback from former students who took post-secondary programs. Student feedback is essential to maintain quality and relevance in the education system. In 2022, over 28,500 former students were surveyed; key results from those surveys are presented in this report. 90% of the former…