Documents secondary school 5 results

"The paper draws on a qualitative case study of workplace industrial relations in an inner–city secondary school identified as 'failing' and subsequently closed. It considers the way unionized teachers and their representatives interpret, influence and resist the impact of centralized managerial and educational change. The local implementation of such change leads to an engagement with the debates on union renewal. In particular, the paper explores the dynamic interrelationship between political and trade union activism and the tension between workplace relations and formal union organization."

"The article explores the extent to which the organization of vocational tracks in upper secondary school affects the labour market risks associated with early school exit. The Nordic countries share many features, but the upper secondary school systems differ significantly in how their vocational tracks are organized. Denmark and Norway have dual vocational tracks, that is, they combine school-based education and workplace apprenticeships, whereas in Finland and Sweden they are primarily school based. We analyse administrative longitudinal data from the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s in the four countries and find the highest vocational track dropout rates in Norway and the lowest in Finland. The results indicate that the relative labour market effect of dropping out from a vocational track is most detrimental in Norway. It is also in Norway that we find the greatest gender differences in this respect."

"his paper investigates whether the interaction between family background and secondary school tracking affects human capital accumulation. A widely shared view is that more tracking reinforces the role of parental privilege, and thereby reduces equality of opportunities. This may occur for several reasons, including peer effects (more talented students are gathered together), teacher sorting (better teachers prefer teaching better students), differences in curricula (academic oriented schools – like the German gymnasium, the French lycée, the British grammar school or the Italian liceo – teach abilities that increase the probability of entering college) and/or differences in resource endowment. Compared to the current literature, which focuses on early outcomes, such as test scores at 13 and 15 years old, we look at later outcomes, including literacy, dropout rates, college enrolment, employability and earnings. While we do confirm the common view that school tracking reinforces the impact of family background when looking at educational attainment and labour market outcomes, we do not confirm the same results when studying its impact on literacy and on-the-job training. Overall school tracking has an ambiguous effect in our sample of countries. On the one hand, and consistently with the previous literature, tracking has a detrimental impact on educational attainment, because it prevents some individuals from further progressing to the tertiary level of education (the diversion effect). On the other hand, the curricula offered in vocational schools seem more effective in promoting further training and adult competences (the specialization effect), thereby reducing the impact of parental background on these two outcomes. Thus, reducing the extent of student tracking, either by raising the age of first selection or by reducing the number of tracks available, may be appropriate for increasing intergenerational mobility in educational attainment, but may increase social exclusion for people from disadvantaged backgrounds."