Throughout the 1980s and 90s there was international interest in the UK’s extensive experience (which began in the 1970s) with measures to alleviate youth unemployment. Today the UK attracts international attention on account of its low rates of youth unemployment and NEET, its (still) relatively rapid education-to-work transitions, and (according to the OECD) its sustainable system for funding mass higher education. This paper uses a transitions regime paradigm to overview the outcomes of 40 years of change in England’s lower and upper secondary education, government-supported training, welfare provisions, economy and labour markets. We see how government policies polarise schools and young people into those who are achieving and those who are failing. Then, as employers become more influential, young people are re-sorted into the employment classes that have been formed during 30 years of change in the economy and labour market. Most from the former achieving group are pulled into the centre, between the smaller numbers on the one side who are embarking on elite careers, and on the other those who become part of a precariat class.

This article aims to explore the views of primary school teachers regarding the educational leadership exercised by leader teachers at the human resource management level, and how this can affect their willingness to communicate and collaborate. The theoretical framework analyzes the dimensions of human resource management by a leader teacher, as a communication channel, team empowerer, and creator of a climate of trust. The research was carried out using quantitative method, with a closed digital questionnaire which was completed by 693 primary school teachers from whole Greece. Initially, the analysis was carried out through descriptive statistics and then selected questions were analyzed by statistical inference test. The findings show a shift towards the model of a transformational leader, despite the country’s education system remaining highly centralized. In addition, the findings show a correlation between democratic and cooperative staff management, with the axes of inspiration and responsibility on the teachers’ side. This article highlights whether the communication skills of a leader teacher affect the functioning of the school. The research was carried out during a pandemic and thus it was not possible to collect qualitative data using interviews with leader teachers so that we can have a comparative approach to the issue.

This article approaches secondary Vocational Education & Training (VET) in Portugal from a historical-educational perspective, namely the professional courses introduced in 2004 in public secondary schools. Its implementation aimed to obtain a qualified technical workforce and to fight against the high failure rate and school dropouts registered in technological courses. It was also proposed, to complete 12-year compulsory education, qualifying students for the exercise of a profession as level IV technicians of the national qualifications framework (NQF). As a result, the number of students enrolled in this modality has progressed from a residual value of 10% in 2004 to 39.7% in 2018. On average, its attendance in the European Union (EU) was 54.6%, with special emphasis on Finland and the Czech Republic, whose indicators were, 71.6% and 71.3%. With the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic came the unplanned closure of schools in the spring of 2020, imposed to protect the well-being of society, but which caused discontinuities. This research concludes by taking into account professional education in Portugal and the EU in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, also considering the opinion of educational actors (course directors, teachers, and students) on the functioning of VET in Portugal.

There is little empirical evidence that convinces the effectiveness of distributed leadership in contemporary educational research. Thus, many distinguished scholars suggest its’ statistical examination. Considering this need, the primary purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of principals’ distributed leadership practices on students’ learning outcomes at Technical and Vocational Education Training schools in Eritrea. The study was conducted based on quantitative design and applied structural equation modelling. A sample of six hundred and three students was employed. The researcher developed the structural equation model to test a model that hypothesized the relationship between the major variables using path analysis. The study results demonstrate that the principals’ distributed leadership practice has a direct and significant (.883, p<.001) effect on students’ learning outcomes keeping other things constant. The strongest predictor of students’ learning outcomes was capacity building, given it has the largest path coefficient (β=.346). Moreover, findings show gender disparity among the respondents and in terms of turnout rate; nevertheless, it was not statistically significant (p<.001). One of the study’s contributions is that it developed and assessed the validity of the principals’ distributed leadership practice scale for Eritrea’s TVET schools through CFA model. The study offered basic evidence that distributed type of leadership is a significant predictor of learning outcomes by exploring six factors of leadership practices, which shows a promising area for practice and future studies.