WHO ACHIEVES LEVEL 2 QUALIFICATIONS DURING ADULTHOOD? EVIDENCE FROM THE NCDS

ABSTRACT: 

This paper describes the characteristics of people who return to learning to achieve at least a level 2 qualification, drawing on the 1958 National Child Development Cohort Study. Results show that adults who gained level 2 were more likely than those who did not to have been engaged in a range of learning activities at earlier ages, including learning during childhood, staying in education during adolescence and undertaking courses leading and not leading to qualifications during adulthood. The factor that has the highest impact on progression by age 33 and by age 42 is early school attainment. This means that for individuals who do well at school there is a greater chance of achievement of qualifications during adulthood, even when this qualification is not achieved by age 23. We further find that socioeconomic constraints in adulthood may be less of a barrier to progression than is often believed. Taking together, these findings suggest that the main focus should be on paying particular attention to attitudinal barriers to learning, rather than just being concerned with removing economic and social constraints.

Keywords:

• progression
• education
• qualifications
• UK

6. Acknowledgements

We would like to thank research staff at the Centre for Research on the Wider Benefits of Learning for their useful comments. The paper has also benefited from comments during presentations at the Bedford Group Seminar (November 2006) and at the National Institute for Adult and Continuing Education in Leicester, UK (December 2006). We would also like to thank the Department for Education and Skills for their financial support of this project.

Notes

¹ The probit model is derived from the assumption of a latent outcome, in our case progression during adulthood, which has a linear relation with the observed characteristics of individuals. The latent outcome is unobserved, but not its realisation. In other words, we observed whether individuals actually progressed or not. This binary variable, 0 if individuals did not progress and 1 if individuals progress, has a probabilistic association with the observed characteristics of individuals. Assuming that this probabilistic model follows a normal distribution, the parameters estimated in the probit model indicate how much the variable of interest increases or decreases the likelihood that individuals will progress in education during adulthood.