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Letter No.46
13 September, 1996
TRAINING and JOBS
ETSA replies to some of the challenges on just what works...
Our Special Feature in the Jobs Letter No 41 summarised an article from The Economist which challenged the commonly-held view that training helps unemployed people into jobs.
The Economist research indicated that the performance of training schemes in placing people in work was often over-stated, and appears to reflect the prevailing economic conditions, rather than overcoming them.
We received many calls and requests relating to our summary, and SUSAN SHIPLEY, policy manager for the Education & Training Support Agency (ETSA), has written to the Jobs Letter with an ETSA perspective on this debate.
Ms Shipley says that readers of the Economist article may conclude that our Government is wasting its time - and taxpayers' money - on skills development for work. Shipley : "The Economist report gave only a partial account of overseas research findings which suited its own particular political perspective..."
In her letter, Ms Shipley makes the following key points:
Much of the evidence cited by The Economist is relates to unemployed adults (OECD 1994) and on measures of subsequent employment and earnings.
Most western European countries have different training interventions for unemployed adults and young people — adult training for work is often a short preliminary to job placement. In contrast, training for young people is focussed increasingly on education and qualifications outcomes.
The evidence is more mixed than the Jobs Letter summary suggests: for example, the Job Training Partnership programme for disadvantaged people in the USA showed that adult women did improve their earnings after training.
The Youth Training programme, delivered by Training and Enterprise Councils in the UK, is focussed primarily on qualifications outcomes: 995 statistics show that 66% of young people (16-19s) leaving the programme gained a full National Vocational Qualification, mostly in a workplace setting.
High drop-out rates are a problem in Youth Training in the UK, but a substantial proportion of early leavers go back into the programme as a result of the Youth Guarantee policy (as long as you are in the eligible age group, you can re-enter).
A 1990 New Zealand study "The Effectiveness of ACCESS Training" by Clare Dominick of ETSA compared employment outcomes for people receiving ACCESS training with those for a matched sample of people on the NZES Job Seeker Register (JSR) who received no training.
Sample surveys of 1600 individuals (an initial interview and follow-up six months later) produced comparative data which was analysed using state-of-the-art logistic regression prediction techniques.
It was found that ACCESS training was effective in improving individuals' employment prospects - ACCESS trainees were more likely than JSR clients with no training intervention to gain and retain employment the skills learnt in ACCESS were for many trainees directly translated into their subsequent employment ACCESS training added more value to the employment prospects of some individuals than others: namely, people with no/low educational qualifications, Maori, the long term unemployed and those with little or no work experience.
ACCESS training had little effect on the employment prospects of the more advantaged: those with a combination of high educational qualifications, substantial work experience, recent employment and European ethnicity. However, Maori with these education and employment characteristics did gain additional advantage from the training.
The Training Opportunities Programme was designed to be more targeted to such groups who would benefit the most from a training intervention.
The statistics show that 40% of people leaving the Training Opportunities Programme over the 12 months to April 1996 were in employment two months after completing their training and another 17% had moved into further education and training (such as Polytechnic courses).
Training provided under Training Opportunities is increasingly being linked to the National Qualifications Framework. In August 1996, 65% of trainees were on courses which offered credits towards national qualifications. In 1997, the figure will be 90%.
Contact — Susan Shipley,
Policy Manager, Education and Training Support Agency, National Office,
P.O.Box 27-048, Wellington
phone 04-801-5588 fax 04-801-5599
The original Economist article
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