Raising the school leaving age is not a cure-all

Morris Iemma and Education Minister John Della Bosca have announced the NSW minimum school leaving age will be raised to 16 next year. They are holding open the prospect of raising it to 17 or even 18 later on. They point to other states and other countries where the leaving age has been raised, and they say they want NSW to come into line.

This proposal has been widely welcomed, not least by business groups which believe it will improve their supply of skilled labour. The teacher unions are happy and the NSW Opposition has also given it a cautious welcome, for how could anyone not favour giving people more education?

Education is one of those ‘motherhood and apple pie’ issues. Everyone knows that education is ‘a good thing’, so we assume the more we have of it, the better. Rarely do we stop to ask whether it will actually deliver all the benefits that are claimed for it. Nor do we consider whether we should be forcing everyone to have more education, even if they don’t want it, or they are not suited to it.

This latest announcement is a typical example of top-down, one-size-fits-all policy-making. Three-quarters of young people already stay at school to Year 12, but the NSW government is not content with this. It thinks they should all stay on. So it proposes to force the recalcitrant quarter to do what the other three-quarters are doing voluntarily. The assumption here is that what’s good for the majority who stay on is equally good for the minority who currently leave early.

From next year, every 15 year-old will have to stay at school or enroll in a vocational training course, irrespective of how bright they are, how motivated they feel, or whether they have something better lined up they would rather do instead. Mr. Iemma justifies this by saying that ‘every young person should get the best possible start in life.’ But if they think the ‘best possible start’ for them is to leave school early and take a job, too bad. They are wrong, and Mr. Iemma is right.

Except Mr. Iemma is not right. The evidence clearly shows that more schooling or training doesn’t necessarily suit everybody. Indeed, there is a real danger in this latest proposal that we are going to end up spending a lot of money in order to make some young people worse off.

For some years the Australian Council of Educational Research (ACER) has been tracking a sample of young people through school and into further education or employment. Its research confirms that completing Year 12 and going on to university is a good career move – those who follow this path usually find it easier to get jobs and they end up earning more.

But it does not follow from this that everyone benefits from staying at school longer. Those who stay at school to Year 12 and then get a job do no better on average than those who left after Year 10 to take up employment. Those who take vocational courses after Year 10 (and remember the proposal is that more young people should do this) actually do worse in the labour market than those who leave early to take up an apprenticeship with an employer.

But what is most shocking is the evidence on the less able children – the ones Iemma is presumably trying to help. Those with low numeracy and literacy scores who nevertheless stay at school to Year 12 end up doing worse than their contemporaries who leave at early. Their risk of unemployment is 3 percentage points higher, and their weekly full-time earnings are more than 2 percentage points lower, for every additional year they spend at school.

The Productivity Commission has looked at this research. It concludes: ‘The best labour market results for students generally occur when they match their underlying potential for completion with the corresponding choice of further schooling. Poor matching yields the worst outcomes.’

Or in plain English: it’s horses for courses. Low ability students do not benefit from being pushed through more schooling or more formal training courses. In today’s labour market, their best option is to leave school early and train on the job.

That’s what most of them are currently doing. But Mr. Iemma is going to stop them doing this, because he wants the NSW education statistics to match those of other states or countries.

No matter that nothing of value will get taught in the classroom. Never mind the likely frustration and disruption that will follow by forcing kids who hate school and get nothing from it to stay for another year – or even three. Forget the research that shows that this change will probably reduce the earnings and employment prospects of those affected by it. Introduce the change regardless. Because the government knows best.

Professor Peter Saunders is Social Research Director at the Centre for Independent Studies his paper What Are Low Ability Workers To Do When Unskilled Jobs Disappear? was released by CIS in December.