Does workplace training participation vary by type of secondary level qualification? England and Germany in comparison

ABSTRACT

Existing evidence shows that the higher the level of education the higher the likelihood to participate in workplace training. However, we know little about training participation of individuals educated to the secondary level, and whether this may vary by the type of qualification attained, i.e. vocational or general. Vocational qualification holders are known to find employment sooner after school than those with a general qualification but we do not know whether they are also more likely to participate in workplace training. Using data from the 2012 Programme of International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) and logistic regressions, we investigate whether vocational qualification holders are more likely to participate in workplace training than general ones in Germany and England. Germany is a coordinated labour market economy with a large emphasis on the provision of vocational qualifications which facilitate school-to-work transitions whereas England is an example of liberal labour markets where the focus is on general qualifications. Results show that in Germany general qualification holders are more likely to participate in training compared to vocational ones; however, differences reduce when controlling for endogeneity. In contrast, in England there is no difference between types of qualification.

KEYWORDS:

• Workplace training
• vocational and general education
• PIAAC
• comparative analysis

Acknowledgments

This research was conducted during my PhD at the University of Southampton. It was funded by a scholarship provided by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) (award: 1096155) which I gratefully acknowledge.

Rossella Icardi is a Research Associate in the department of Social & Policy Sciences at the University of Bath. Her main research interests include labour market outcomes of educational qualifications and comparative research.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Despite this variable is affected by a very high number of item non-response -to avoid losing an excessive number of cases- missing values have been recoded into a binary indicator (labelled ‘missing’).

2. Results available from the author upon request.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Rossella Icardi

Rossella Icardi is a Research Associate in the department of Social & Policy Sciences at the University of Bath. Her main research interests include labour market outcomes of educational qualifications and comparative research.