This paper provides participation and labour market outcome analysis of Youth Training between 1999 and 2008 using the Youth Training administrative dataset. It tracks various facets of the programme to determine key changes and trends across time.

The Youth Training programme is part of a suite of vocational education and training programmes in operation in New Zealand, collectively referred to as Targeted Training Programmes. Youth Training is targeted towards young people who have low or no qualifications and who are at risk of being unemployed. Its genesis lies in the Training Opportunities programme in operation from 1993 to 1998, which in turn evolved from Access programmes.

The Youth Training programme started in 1999, through the creation of a separate stream for young people out of Training Opportunities. In 2002, a policy review led to a widening of the eligibility criteria to young people lacking foundation skills, that is, any person with fewer than a total of 12 credits in English (literacy) and /or mathematics (numeracy) in NCEA.

While the Ministry of Education and the Tertiary Education Commission (TEC) have published participation information for targeted training programmes in several forums, these have often been limited to trainee counts. This paper extends these by providing deeper analysis of Youth Training using programme administration unit record data. Research questions are numerous, but this paper focuses on the following:

• who participates, and why?
• what differences (if any) exist within and between groups?
• who succeeds?
• who does not succeed, and why?