Predicting Success: Key Characteristics of Youth Affecting Transitions to Education and the Labour Market

The importance of securing post-secondary education has been demonstrated earlier in this report and elsewhere. This chapter considers the association of earlier educational achievement, as measured in PISA 2000, with subsequent pathways to educational attainment, as well as the likely effects of higher PISA achievement on further educational attainment. The chapter also presents pathways by the age of 21, when transitions between education, work and inactivity are likely to be common. The relative influence of PISA achievement, simultaneously analysed with a number of background characteristics, confirms the importance of prior competencies. This also provides some important policy implications that are particularly relevant to equity.