Premium
Youth Education Attainment and Participation in E urope: the role of contextual factors and the scope of education policy
Author(s) -
Alegre Miquel Àngel,
Benito Ricard
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
european journal of education
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.577
H-Index - 45
eISSN - 1465-3435
pISSN - 0141-8211
DOI - 10.1111/ejed.12045
Subject(s) - educational attainment , vocational education , scope (computer science) , education policy , adult education , population , demographic economics , multivariate analysis , comparative education , higher education , primary education , economic growth , political science , sociology , economics , demography , medicine , computer science , programming language
This article examines how certain contextual factors explain levels of education attainment and participation amongst youths in 30 E uropean countries, whilst also exploring the scope for action of education policy when dealing with these issues. Through simple OLS regressions, we first evaluate the impact of a group of contextual indicators on the percentage of the population aged 20 to 24 having completed at least upper secondary education (education attainment) and the number of students aged 18 as a percentage of the corresponding age population (education participation). Secondly, through multivariate OLS analysis, we identify the net impact of some of these factors on the levels of education participation of 18‐year‐olds. The results show the significance of three factors: low‐skilled occupation, the structure of public spending on education, and the importance of vocational education programmes in secondary education.