Comparing inequality and outcomes across post-16 education in the UK

This project will investigate the different post-16 education and training systems across the four UK nations.

UK policy increasingly focuses on consolidating further and higher education. It is claimed that this approach reduces barriers, diversifies pathways, and democratises access to post-16 education and training. However, the blurred boundary between further and higher education hides vertical stratification. This is resulting in within-system inequalities and institutional tension as different organisations compete over students, funds, and prestige.

Evidence suggests that, for young people, this stratification can entrench inequalities of access, retention, educational outcomes, and long-term labour market outcomes based on class, gender, age, and ethnicity. This project will map the relationship between different systems, policy landscapes and changing responses to skills demand within post-16 education and training across the UK. The findings will enable policymakers and practitioners to better understand the implications for student access, experiences and outcomes.

Using a mixed methods design, the research team will:

• Build a comprehensive map examining post-16 education and training policies across the four UK nations.
• Provide quantitative analysis of educational inequalities and resulting early labour market inequalities, including as a result of variation in school leaving ages across the UK.
• Analyse six industry sectors and their associated education and training structures and pathways, focussing on the relationships between skills demands and supply.
• Explore young peoples’ lived experience of the different education and training systems, the labour market, and how they navigate different pathways.

The project will provide policy recommendations on tertiary educational structuring and practice in the face of evolving policy developments, skill demands and labour market opportunities.

Key stakeholders for the project include UK and devolved ministers, government officials, relevant select committees and All-Party Parliamentary Groups, opposition spokespeople, youth leaders, representative bodies, influential leaders in the education and training sectors, influential leaders in business and employment, education and employment researchers and charities, and the media.