Youth Training - Statistical Profile 1999 to 2008

11. Conclusions

This paper provides a statistical analysis of the Youth Training programme, using data sourced from the Tertiary Education Commission’s (TEC’s) administrative dataset.

Youth Training is a government funded programme which focuses on young learners who have left school with no or low qualifications. It aims to impart a set of foundation skills to enable participants to move into sustainable employment and/or higher levels of tertiary education. Funding is provided by Vote: Education and is administered by the TEC. Youth Training originated as a separation of young participants from the Training Opportunities programme, in 1999.

Aside from some basic quantitative information in accountability documents, and occasional qualitative exploration, there has been little by the way of publicly available information on the Youth Training programme. This statistical study is therefore a first. It provides participation and outcome information and statistical modelling of factors associated with entrance to and the outcomes of Youth Training. It examines:

• who participates in Youth Training, and why
• how representative is participation
• how responsive is Youth Training to labour market / education / population changes
• how success is measured
• who succeeds, and why.

11.1 Participation

The analysis finds that participation in Youth Training has declined slowly between 1999 and 2008, in line with the number of learners leaving school with low or no qualifications, but not always in line with the youth unemployment rate. Youth unemployment has been rising since 2006, while Youth Training placements have continued to decline. The connection between youth risk of unemployment and Youth Training participation is not as clear as might be expected.

GDP growth does not appear to be a good predictor of Youth Training participation. In part, this may be because young people have different work and study patterns than the rest of the population. As it is common for many 15 to 24 year olds to be involved either in school education or further education, the labour force participation rate for this age group tends to be lower than for other age groups. There has been a national trend towards lower labour market participation over the past decade among 15 to 24 year olds as increasing proportions engage in further study.

Young people tend to work on a part-time basis, at a higher rate than any other group. The Department of Labour estimates that almost two-thirds (62 percent) of 15 to 19 year olds in employment worked part-time as at December 2008 and 42 percent of all casual workers were aged 15 to 24 years. Youth juggle study with work at a greater rate than any other age group and they work in industries characterised by their high proportion of part-time work. By occupation, most youth fit into the service and sales workers group. The industries and occupations in which youth work tend to be amongst the most vulnerable in times of economic downturn. The comparatively limited work experience and lack of skills of young people also heighten their vulnerability. There are differences between the employment patterns of youth aged 15–19 and those aged 20–24 years, with the older youth group being more similar to the total working-age population.

It is increasingly recognised internationally that young people who are out of the labour force and not otherwise economically active (NEETs) are the most vulnerable of all young people.  However, there seems to be little statistical relationship between Youth Training participation and the number of NEETs. The NEET rate reached a high in 2006, however, Youth Training placements did not react in the same scale as these increases, but continued along a path of steady decline (although the rate of decline in placements fell slightly in 2006).

Fewer young people are leaving school with no or low qualifications than in the past. This has contributed to the decline in Youth Training placements. This trend is particularly evident between 2005 and 2007. The proportion of Youth Training placements by young people with no formal secondary school qualifications or less than 12 credits at level 1 has also declined from 73 percent in 1999 to 45 percent in 2008.  The proportion of placements by learners with school certificate level / level 1 qualifications has increased from 23 percent in 1999 to 53 percent in 2008.

Higher school education attainment rates have not translated into higher employment for all young people. In contrast, the unemployment rate for 15 to 19 year olds has been increasing since 2006, while the NEET rate has fluctuated, all during periods of record low unemployment for the general population (before the current financial crisis). This suggests that there are young people in the community at risk of unemployment who do not have access to Youth Training.

This may be an allocation problem. Even while the proportion of young people leaving school with no or low qualifications has declined, there is still a significant proportion of young people who are vulnerable to labour market and educational exclusion.  It could be that, with improving school qualification attainment, the requirements and expectations of employers have risen but the disparity in outcomes between those with lower and higher attainment has remained: employers will choose young people with higher qualifications over those with lower or no qualifications and the fact that there are now more of the former than the latter may make it more difficult for the latter to gain employment.

Alternatively, it may be a selection problem. Some young people may not participate in Youth Training because they are simply not accessible, for example if they are at home and are inactive and do not come to the attention of organisations or individuals that may be able to refer them to a Youth Training course. They may not have knowledge of Youth Training and so will be unlikely to refer themselves to the programme. They may not have the self-confidence to believe they can achieve in an educational setting or they may be wary of trying education again, having perhaps not succeeded at school. Some young people with serious problems may be too preoccupied with these to be able to opt for training. They also may not be selected to participate in Youth Training because they may be perceived to be too difficult to work with. This is a risk where funding depends on the attainment of good outcomes: providers may be incentivised to select learners who they think will succeed and reject the ones they feel won’t for fear of not meeting their positive outcome targets.

We have identified some of the characteristics that correlate well with participation in Youth Training within three years of leaving school. These include the number of NCEA credits attained at school. Learners who show no credit attainment at school were most likely to participate. For those who did attain some credits, the proportion of unit standards taken (over achievement standards) also made a difference. School leavers who took mostly unit standards were more likely to enter Youth Training within three years than those who took mainly achievement standards.

Learners leaving lower decile schools were more likely to enter Youth Training within three years than learners from higher decile schools, and school leavers granted early leaving exemptions were over 20 times as likely to participate as those who were not. 

Just under half of all Youth Training participants are Māori, another 40 percent are European, 10 percent are Pasifika with other groups making up the remainder. These proportions have remained fairly constant since Youth Training’s inception. When compared to the target population for Youth Training – young people with low or no qualifications – Māori are overrepresented in Youth Training, while European people are under-represented. This may be to do with TEC’s participation targets for Māori.

As would be expected, given the age targeting of the programme to under 18 years on initial acceptance into the programme, most participants are aged 15, 16 or 17 years. The proportion of learners aged 15 years at any one time reached a high of 35 percent in 2005 but has dropped to just over 23 percent in 2008. This is a reflection of increased school retention, specifically of changes to the criteria for early leaving exemptions, meaning much fewer are now granted.

The increasing frequency of placements in Youth Training for learners may also be a contributor to the change in the Youth Training age profile. Learners are less likely to be younger than in early days of the programme, in part because learners are now more likely to have had multiple placements in Youth Training. The flow of new learners into Youth Training has reduced: the proportion of learners participating in their first calendar year has fallen between 2002 and 2008 from 69 percent to 63 percent.  At the same time, the proportion of learners placed twice who were active in placements in 2002 was 33 percent, and this proportion increased to 40 percent in 2008.

Placements are also increasing in duration. The proportion of placements lasting for 25 or more weeks has increased from 17 percent in 2001 to 32 percent in 2008.  It has been argued that  reduction in newer recruits and an increase in the duration and number of placements for existing participants is due to the fact the current crop of learners require more attention and longer intervention because they have deeper needs. Proponents of this argument note that former sources of participants have reduced, with the increasing school retention, the lower rate of early leaving exemptions and increased school qualification attainment rates. This means that those with more complex needs are a higher proportion of the total.

While there is possibly some truth to this argument, it cannot be the sole reason. Youth Training is age targeted so there should be a smooth flow of new, young entrants who require some help at each age, as each year passes. The youth unemployment and NEET rates confirm that there are young people in the community with the sorts of needs Youth Training was set up to address. It is a question of the programme being able to reach them.

11.2 Outcomes of Youth Training

There has been an increase in the proportion of learners who attain a ‘positive’ outcome two months after leaving Youth Training.  The proportion of placement outcomes deemed positive has increased from 76 percent in 1999 to 84 percent in 2008, and most of this increase has occurred in the proportion of learners gaining full-time employment (around 10 percentage points).

Statistical modelling shows that a successful outcome is quite heavily determined by factors external to the Youth Training programme. Taking all other factors into account, three of the largest predictors of an employment or further training outcome at the end of each placement are:

• participants’ location
• previous employment history (whether the trainee has worked before entering Youth Training)
• their educational attainment prior to entering the programme.

External factors such as the date (which is a proxy measure for the prevailing labour market conditions), ethnic group and the gender of the learner also appear to be important. In addition, placement order and training provider type affect outcomes.

The fact that there are better employment outcomes over time can be accounted for in part by the increase in the proportion of participants entering the programme who have some form of prior work experience. The proportion of learners participating in Youth Training who had part-time work experience increased from 38 percent in 1999 to 42 percent in 2008.

The year of completion of training, a proxy for the labour market, is another determinant. Labour market conditions deteriorated for young people in 2008, no doubt a consequence of the early effects of the current economic downturn on the vulnerable industries that young people predominantly participate in, and Youth Training employment labour market outcomes dropped from 33 percent in 2007 to 26 percent accordingly. Regional effects are also likely to encompass changes in regional labour markets over time, affecting the availability of jobs to take up both before and after participation in Youth Training.

However, there can be no doubt that participation in Youth Training programmes does have some effect. Credit attainment is a strongest predictor of success in Youth Training: if learners attain a certain number of credits in Youth Training placements, (20 or more) then their chances of a positive outcome are increased.

The modelling described in this report shows that prior educational attainment is a relatively low predictor of credit attainment in Youth Training, which implies that, when done well, what occurs on Youth Training courses makes a difference. There is a relatively small effect from prior educational attainment in that the odds of a positive outcome increase with the level of prior educational attainment but the effect of duration in a placement / accumulation of credits is the most powerful.

In the statistical model, duration of training and credit attainment appear interchangeable.  This shows that these variables are positively correlated, suggesting that the longer a learner stays in a programme, the more credits he or she will accumulate. A return to Youth Training outcome, and further progressive training, and an employment outcome are all things that may be quite highly influenced by the accumulation of credits.

Do multiple spells in Youth Training improve learners’ chances of gaining a positive outcome? The effects of multiple placements and credit attainment / duration, could be used as a measure of programme quality. We have already seen that credit accumulation, strongly correlated with duration spent in a placement, is an important predictor of outcomes. But, taking everything else in the model into account, there is a reduction in the probability of employment or further progressive training with more than two placements. It might seem that multiple placements are in some way detrimental to a learner’s progression outside the programme.

It could be argued that external factors, such previous work experience and educational history, mean that people who do multiple spells in Youth Training are those who have lower chances of gaining employment anyway. However, many of these effects may have been accounted for in the regression model; additional placements in the programme still seem to have a detrimental effect, even when controlling for all variables.  However, there may be factors not captured in the model which contribute to the apparently negative effect of multiple placements.

There are also ethnic and gender group differences in outcomes when all other variables are taken into account. For European participants, the odds of a negativeoutcome – unemployment or out of the labour force – are significantly lowerthan for all other types of outcome, but for Māori and Pasifika the opposite is true: the odds of unemployment / out of the labour market status are higher than any of the positive outcomes. The same pattern exists for males over females. Males are least likely to attain a negative outcome while females are most likely to.

The reasons for all these observed effects are not clear, and as such, Youth Training could benefit from some further analysis. Youth Training placements are becoming longer, and more frequent for learners already in the programme, but additional placements may not improve the chances of a positive outcome.

11.3 Summary

Youth Training helps some vulnerable people, but this paper shows that Youth Training may not be accessed by the some in the most vulnerable group, that is the NEETs. Of those who do participate, the people who are clearly relatively advantaged in terms of prior educational achievement and previous history of employment, living in areas with high job availability and participating in times of low unemployment do better than the less well-advantaged in these respects. Those with more need are often less successful than those with lower need. Further, multiple spells in the programme may attach a label to some learners in the eyes of potential employers which can make it more difficult to gain employment after leaving.

To determine the longer term outcomes of Youth Training, it may be feasible to incorporate targeted training data into future releases of the Employment Outcomes of Tertiary Education project. This will enable a much longer term view of participants outcomes to be reached, and will enable matching of participants to similar non-participants to assess the predictors of longer term outcomes.