Ian Shuttleworth

The Relationship between Social Deprivation, as Measured by Individual Free School Meal Eligibility, and Educational Attainment at GCSE in Northern Ireland: a preliminary investigation

The paper analyses the impact of socio‐economic status (SES) on academic attainment at the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) in Northern Ireland and evaluates the effectiveness of administrative use of free school meal variables at pupil and school level as an indicator of social deprivation. The results of the analysis show that free school meal eligibility at the pupil level is an adequate indicator of deprivation. They also point to a significant school SES contextual effect as measured by the percentage of pupils per school in receipt of free school meals. In the absence of data on prior attainment, the analysis shows that grammar school pupils on average have higher GCSE scores than secondary school pupils and suggests, personal/ family background and type of last school attended being equal, that Catholic pupils perform as well as those of other denominations.

Analysing Commuting Using Local Regression Techniques: Scale, Sensitivity, and Geographical Patterning

In this paper, two forms of local regression are employed in the analysis of relations between out-commuting distance and other socioeconomic variables in Northern Ireland. The two regression approaches used are moving window regression (MWR) and geographically weighted regression (GWR). For the first approach different window sizes are applied and changes in results assessed. For the second approach, a Gaussian kernel is used and its bandwidth varied. Seven independent variables are utilised, although a single variable (deprivation) provides the main analytical focus. Differences in results obtained with use of the two approaches are discussed. The relationship between window size or bandwidth size and observed spatial patterning is discussed and elucidated. The results support previous work that indicated severe limitations in using global regressions to examine relationships between socioeconomic variables. Also, the utility of comparing results obtained from MWR and GWR is assessed and the benefits of both approaches are outlined.

Young People, Job Search and Local Labour Markets: The Example of Belfast

In debates about employability, the role of area perceptions in shaping the labour market behaviour of individuals has been neglected. This paper sets out to gain an understanding of what relatively disadvantaged young people in Belfast know about the geography of labour market opportunities in the city and the locations where they are prepared to work. Using secondary data analysis and primary research methods, it is shown that most young people have a highly localised outlook. Factors of limited mobility, lack of confidence and religion intertwine in complex ways to limit perceived opportunities. It is concluded that geography does play a role in shaping access to employment and training opportunities.

Are Northern Ireland's Communities Dividing? Evidence from Geographically Consistent Census of Population Data, 1971–2001

There is an extensive literature on various aspects of segregation in Northern Ireland (NI). However, there are no census-based analyses of population change and residential segregation that cover the entire 1971–2001 period using consistent geographical units through time for all NI. This shortcoming is addressed in this paper by an analysis of changes in (i) the spatial distribution of population and (ii) residential segregation between 1971 and 2001 using the NI Grid-Square Product comprising data for a set of 1km2 cells that cover all populated areas in NI. The substantive issue of whether NI has become more segregated through time is addressed as are questions about measuring change through time using the census and the importance of spatial scale. One important conclusion is that NI indeed became more residential^ segregated between 1971 and 2001, but that residential segregation in 2001 remained approximately at its 1991 level according to most indicators.

The Emigration and Employment of Irish Graduates The Export of High-Quality Labour From the Periphery of Europe

During the late 1980s, emigration of university graduates from the Republic of Ireland rose to unprecedented levels. More than one-quarter of the graduates were living abroad nine months after graduation, according to statistics issued by the Higher Education Authority. After reviewing the changing socio-economic background to Irish emigration since the early 1950s, the second, and major, part of the article will present the findings of a large-scale empirical investigation of the employment and migration histories of a sample of 383 graduates who left Irish universities in the mid-1980s. This survey was carried out in 1990 and so recorded approximately five years of occupational and spatial mobility for each respondent. Although the survey results do back up popular impressions of an Irish brain drain, in many respects Irish high-skilled migration is merely a subset of total Irish migration since the graduates were found to rely on traditional family and ethnic networks in choosing their destination and often their employment. The destination countries of Irish graduate emigrants closely reflected the destinations of Irish emigrants as a whole, except that graduates showed a higher propensity to migrate to continental European countries. Moreover, a lot of to-and-fro movement was discovered, indicating that Irish graduates are highly mobile and responsive to opportunities at home and abroad. Finally the theoretical and policy implications of the research are evaluated. Conceptually the Irish brain drain can be contextualized within centre-periphery theory and the notion of Ireland having a truncated labour market: in other words, as a small-scale, geographically peripheral, unindustrialized and ex-colonial economy, Ireland cannot provide sufficient challenging jobs for its graduate population, which is itself increasing. Policy-wise, educating young people for export may be hard to justify, particularly when this investment in human capital is exported to richer countries like the United States, Britain and Germany.

Distance between home and work: a multilevel analysis of individual workers, neighbourhoods, and employment sites in Northern Ireland

We explore the distances between home and work for employees at twenty-eight different employment sites across Northern Ireland. Substantively, this is important for better understanding the geography of labour catchments. Methodologically, with data on the distances between place of residence (566 wards) and place of work for some 15 000 workers, and the use of multilevel modelling (MLM), the analysis adds to the evidence derived from other census-based and survey-based studies. Descriptive analysis is supplemented with MLM that simultaneously explores individual, neighbourhood, and site variations in travel-to-work patterns using hierarchical and cross-classified model specifications, including individual and ecological predictor variables (and their cross-level interactions). In doing so we apportion variability to different levels and spatial contexts, and also outline the factors that shape spatial mobility. We find, as expected, that factors such as gender and occupation influence the distance between home and work, and also confirm the importance of neighbourhood characteristics (such as population density observed in ecological analyses at ward level) in shaping individual outcomes, with major differences found between urban and rural locations. Beyond this, the analysis of variability also points to the relative significance of residential location, with less individual variability in travel-to-work distance between workers within wards than within employment sites. We conclude by suggesting that, whilst some general ‘rules’ about the factors that shape labour catchments are possible (eg workers in rural areas and in higher occupations travel further than others), the complex variability between places highlighted by the MLM analysis illustrates the salience of place-specific uniqueness.

Redundancy, readjustment, and employability: what can we learn from the 2000 Harland & Wolff redundancy?

Large-scale redundancies have been a common feature of the UK industrial landscape in recent years and a changing labour market and institutional context supports the need for ongoing research into this important area. In this paper the authors examine the postredundancy experience of workers who were made redundant from Harland & Wolff in Belfast in 2000 to identify the factors that affected the employability of those workers and to consider some aspects of state intervention. These workers might be regarded as being potentially disadvantaged with high risks of long-term unemployment and so provide a stiff test for policies for successful postredundancy transitions into the new economy with its demands for employability and flexibility. Employability is usually associated with supply-side measures, but the role of labour demand also needs to be explored, and the adjustment process is thus considered against the background of overall labour-market change that has occurred in Northern Ireland in recent years. The authors suggest that state intervention through the provision of job-related training can be a successful response to redundancy but that general skills training is questionable because of low uptake and perceptions of irrelevance. Job-specific training was not sufficient on its own to explain the relatively high rates of reemployment in this case. The presence of a group of engineering employers provided both the conditions for job-related training and then the vacancies for the redundant workers to fill. In debates about employability it is important that the demand-side of the labour market should receive sufficient attention. The authors also suggest that there are wider merits in taking a geographical approach to labour-market policy even if only restricted to the supply side. They suggest that employability should be developed in ways specific to local conditions and groups of workers. The differences in the characteristics of the workers who followed different postredundancy paths led to the conclusion that interventions could be precisely targeted to clearly defined groups of workers.

Evaluation of Gridded Population Models Using 2001 Northern Ireland Census Data

There is growing interest in the use of gridded population models which potentially offer advantages of stability through time and ease of integration with nonpopulation data sources. This paper assesses the accuracy of models of the type introduced by Martin in 1989. Population counts for census output areas (OAs) are reallocated to a 100 m grid and then compared with true 100 m cell population counts uniquely available from the 2001 Northern Ireland Census. This analysis is novel, being the first large-scale assessment of gridded population models against true gridded population counts. We find evidence that kernel width and cell size are more important than the distance-decay parameter; that local mass preservation approaches are more appropriate in urban areas; but that the spatial scale of input data is more important than model parameters. It is suggested that more attention needs to be given to the varying spatial structures of population between places and that incorporating this information through geostatistical approaches could yield further insights.

Analysing average travel‐to‐work distances in Northern Ireland using the 1991 census of population: The effects of locality, social composition, and religion

Shuttleworth I. G. and Lloyd C. D. (2005) Analysing average travel‐to‐work distances in Northern Ireland using the 1991 Census of Population: the effects of locality, social composition, and religion, Regional Studies 39 , 909–921. Travel‐to‐work patterns have important implications for national and international debates about employability and the causes of unemployment. Therefore, using Northern Ireland as an example, this paper explores the factors that shape commuting flows using data from the Census of Population. An analytical framework is developed that explores the use of local regression for this type of socio‐economic application. The relative importance of locational and social compositional factors as influences on daily travel‐to‐work patterns is considered. The paper concludes by suggesting that general regression models may hide local variations in relationships and that locational factors, such as proximity to employment opportunities, can outweigh social characteristics as determinants of commuting.

Determinants of the uptake of Mathematics in Northern Ireland: Evidence from the 1980s and 1990s

The paper uses data from three studies of Northern Ireland pupils covering the period 1980 1991 to consider the determinants of examination entry and attainment in Mathematics. The main themes with which the analysis is concerned are gender inequalities, and differentials in the performance of single-sex and co-educational schools. The central focus of the analyses is the degree to which these differentials are significant once the individual, family and school background have been taken into account. Public examination entry and attainment in Mathematics taken at or near the end of compulsory schooling are the outcome measures. The first stage of the analysis is based on a two-level logistic regression of examination entry controlling for family and individual background and, given the selective nature of the Northern Ireland education system, grammar school attendance. In the second stage of the analysis, similar controls are used to examine Mathematics attainment. Overall, school differences relating t...