Background to the Research

• The widely recognised links between education and economic performance provide an important rationale for investigating factors which influence educational participation in Northern Ireland. Studies in Great Britain have indicated that local labour market conditions, school factors, sex, ethnicity and family background, all influence participation.
  

Research Approach

• An important aspect of this study involved comparing the experiences of young people in Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom. In order to do this a detailed literature review of existing studies was conducted. In addition, four local data sets were used: the 1991 Census of Population; the DENI School Leavers Survey; the T&EA 5th Form Destinations Survey, and the Status O Survey. Econometric analyses were also conducted.
  

Main Findings

• There are some important differences in educational participation between the different TTWAs in Northern Ireland. For 17 year olds for example, the lowest participation rate is 42% for Ballymena and the highest is 56% for Enniskillen. For females, the orders of magnitude are similar, although the dispersion is slightly larger. One interesting feature of the data is that the urban areas of Belfast City Council and Londonderry consistently have the lowest rates of educational participation.
  
  
• An analysis of the correlation between educational participation and local economic conditions at TTWA level shows that, with the exception of 16 year-old males, none of the relationships is particularly strong. In these areas it tends to be the case that in wards with high adult unemployment educational participation amongst young people is relatively low, and vice versa.
  
  
• School performance measures such as the attendance rate and overall school examination results, are strongly related to whether or not young people chose to remain in full-time education after the compulsory age. Thus, young people who attended schools which performed relatively well up to 5th form are more likely to remain in full-time education after the compulsory age.
  
  
• Generally speaking, girls are more likely to stay on in full-time education than boys, and Catholics are more likely to stay on than Protestants. The differences in participation by gender are significantly greater than differences by religion.
  
  
• Catholic females tend to have the highest propensity to participate in full-time education and Protestant/Other males have the lowest propensity.
  
  
• Young people whose parents are employed, particularly in non-manual occupations, have relatively high educational participation rates. This can be largely understood in terms of income effect or else an attitudinal effect.
  
  
• One important implication of these findings is that relatively poor educational standards seem to be transferred, to some extent, between successive generations, and this suggests that certain policy interventions may be required in order to break the cycle.