Background to the Research

• A debate has been underway within the research literature concerning the factors that influence the decisions of young people to remain in post-compulsory full-time education. These studies have focused on 2 main areas - socio-economic factors and the characteristics of the schools attended.
• The author explores school performance and staying on in NI schools in order to explore the links between school performance and educational and labour market choices amongst young people.
  

Research Approach

• A representative sample of 1492 young people in NI was taken from the 'Status 0 Survey'. This survey collected information on the first destinations of the young people in October 1993, as well as detailed work history information covering the period 1993-5.
  

Main Findings

• Young people from schools that perform relatively well, (in terms of overall examination performance and attendance rates), are generally more likely to remain in full-time education, all other things being equal.
• Although the overall size of the effects was relatively modest, this was none the less a 'direct' effect of school performance, after having controlled for all other observed variables, including the examination performance of the young people themselves.
• It was argued that this can perhaps be best explained in terms of unobserved cultural factors associated with high performing schools which encourage staying on. School performance measures, and some of the other explanatory measures, impacted differently on the two main components of full-time education, namely school and Further Education college.
• Higher participation rates were found amongst young women and Catholics.
• There was a broadly negative relationship between local unemployment rates and staying on, although much of this could be explained in terms of the coexistence of high unemployment and low staying on rates in the urban areas of Belfast and Derry.