The long-term benefits of academically selective schools have not been thoroughly explored in the Australian context. This research draws on data from a longitudinal study of Australian young people (n = 2933) and utilises Nearest-neighbour matching techniques to explore whether individuals who attend academically selective schools have better…

Apprenticeships remain an important source of skilled workers in Australia; however, commencements have not kept pace with the skills demand projected in the previous decade. During that same decade, undergraduate university enrolments grew considerably. In investigating whether young people who would previously have chosen an apprenticeship have…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to develop a measure of soft skills suitable for use in a large survey of Australian adolescents. Design/methodology/approach: A survey was conducted with N = 4,704 Australians aged 15-19 over 2 years. Principal components analysis was performed on 14 self-report items, followed by generalised linear mixed…

Opportunities for social mobility are generated by education systems designed to alleviate the effects of social origin by providing equality of opportunities and resources. The persistence of the strong association between socioeconomic status (SES) and child's educational achievement and attainment suggests that social origin continues to play…

Although the gender gap in non-compulsory science attracts much attention, few studies compare factors that shape it at subsequent life stages. Here, a life-course approach is used to examine the gender gap in science career expectations at ages 16, 23 and 26 for a recent student cohort. Then, a decomposition is applied to assess what share of the…

Recently, students' interest in science has been conceptualized as a network model: the science interest network model (SINM) in which affective, behavioural and cognitive components interact together; building on science interest being a dynamic relational construct. In the current study, we combine the Australian Programme for International…

In Australia, emphasis in early childhood education policy is placed on the importance of the role of the family as a child's first educator, and finding effective ways to raise the effectiveness of parents in supporting children's learning, development and well-being. International studies demonstrate that the home learning environment (HLE)…