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Chapter Six Current workers: the nature of their part-time jobs

6.1 This section of the report focuses on those pupils who stated that they had a paid part-time job at the time of the survey - the 'current workers'. These pupils were working at the time of the survey and so were able to provide contemporaneous (and arguably more reliable) information on the jobs that they were then doing. We describe the type of work these current workers were involved in, their working hours, when they work and focus upon aspects of their pay and conditions. We also consider who they work for and how they secured their jobs.

Current workers were mainly employed in retail, catering and delivery work

6.2 In the survey we asked current workers to indicate, from a list of sixteen categories, what type of job they have (see Figure 6.1 for the categories). In parts of this chapter we group the sixteen categories into five overarching categories of delivery, babysitting, catering, retail and miscellaneous for ease of analysis.

Figure 6.1: Current workers: type of job by sex (%)

6.3 Young people who were currently in part-time work were employed in three main sectors: retail; catering and delivery work (Figure 6.1 and Table 22, Appendix 1). Retail accounted for 28% of school pupils currently in part-time employment and they were employed in a range of settings: supermarkets (6%), chain stores (8%) and other types of shops (11%) plus a small percentage involved in door-to door selling (3%). It is useful to distinguish between the various types of retail work since this is likely to have a bearing on the type and range of skills that pupils might develop and on the feasibility of the formal recognition of school pupils' part-time employment. Among those working in catering, a majority were employed in cafes or restaurants (16%), the others were working in hotels/B&Bs and in fast food outlets (6% and 6%). Of the 18% in delivery work, the vast majority were involved with delivering newspapers or advertisements. The rest of the pupils were employed across a range of job types: 7% in babysitting and then hairdressing, office work, farming, manual trades and cleaning each accounted for 2% of pupils.

The type of work varied by gender and stage of schooling

6.4 Gender divisions are evident in the type of part-time job that pupils do: delivery is predominately a male activity (33% vs 6%, fig1, Table 22, Appendix 1) while employment in both retail and catering is female dominated (33% vs 21% in both cases). Cleaning and office work are the two areas with a gender balance but they only employ a very small proportion of school pupils.

6.5 The type of job that pupils are employed in varies considerably across year groups, partly reflecting the age-related child employment legislation and the change in status which emerges for pupils once they have a National Insurance number (Figure 6.2 and Table 23, Appendix 1). Delivery work is predominately carried out by S3 and S4 pupils and the extent of pupils' employment in this type of work declines sharply after this stage. The proportions employed by chain stores, supermarkets and other shops rises over the years, especially after S4. There is a trend away from what might be described as 'less structured' employment such as delivery work, babysitting, cleaning, door-to door sales in S3 and S4 to 'more formal' types of employment among S5 and S6 pupils.

Figure 6.2: Current workers: type of job by stage (%)

Limited differences in type of job according to pupils' attainment and social class

6.6 The main contrast in the type of work of current workers in relation to their attainment level is between those in the lowest attainment groups (those who were not studying or had not gained any Standard grades at Credit) and the others. Those pupils in the lowest attainment group were less likely to be working in retail (especially in a chain store) than other pupils and a higher proportion of them had delivery jobs (Figure 6.3, and Table 24, Appendix 1).

Figure 6.3: Current workers: main type of job by Standard Grade level (%)

Figure 6.4: Current workers: main type of job by parents social class (%)

6.7 The type of jobs that pupils were currently employed in showed little variation according to their social class. Pupils from professional/managerial backgrounds were slightly less likely to do delivery work but overall there is little difference (Figure 6.4 and Table 25, Appendix 1). When we looked within the main categories of catering and retail, we found that employment in café/restaurants is slightly more common among pupils from managerial/professional backgrounds than other pupils; in retail pupils from managerial/professional families are more likely to work in chain stores. But in neither case is the difference substantial (café/restaurants: 17% managerial/professional vs 11% missing; chain stores: 9% managerial/professional vs 4% missing, table not shown).

Differences in type of work according to location

6.8 Location was linked to the type of job in which current workers were employed. Unsurprisingly, delivery work (mainly newspapers) was less prevalent among current workers in rural areas (Figure 6.5 and Table 26, Appendix 1). Employment in the catering sector was more common in rural than urban areas especially in relation to work in hotel/B & Bs and café/restaurants. Employment in the retail sector also varied by location: pupils in large urban areas were most likely to work in retail. When we examined work in the retail sector in detail, it was evident that employment in supermarkets was at a similar level across the three types of locations areas but pupils in rural areas were less likely to work in chain stores (table not shown).

Figure 6.5: Current workers: main type of job by location (%)

Most current workers had only one job

6.9 The large majority of pupils currently in part-time employment had one job (85%, Table 6.1), with most of the remainder having two. There was little variation in the number of jobs that young men and young women had and also only slight variation across the year groups in respect of the number of jobs pupils had (Table 6.2). Neither pupils' attainment nor their social class made a difference to the number of jobs that they had.

Table 6.1: Current workers: number of part-time jobs

Table 6.2: Current workers: number of part-time jobs by school year

Average weekly working hours

6.10 The amount of time that pupils spend working part-time has been a particular focus of attention. This is reflected in the views of researchers and professionals such as teachers and the attention given to the impact of the time spent at working part-time on pupils' school work and their attainment. However, at this stage some caution is advised when interpreting the pattern of hours worked. We return to pupils' working hours later in the report when we use multivariate analysis to consider what factors predict the likelihood that pupils work longer hours.

6.11 We asked pupils a number of questions about this aspect of their work in the survey. We found that the average number of hours usually worked each week by those currently in a part-time job was 9.90. There was almost no difference between young men and young women in this respect (Table 6.3).

Table 6.3: Current workers: average number of hours worked per week

Table 6.4: Current workers: average number of hours worked per week by school year

6.12 The average number of hours increased for each year group from an average of 7.32 hours among the S3s to reach 12.47 hours among the S6s (Table 5.4).

6.13 Further analysis of current workers' average working hours showed variation according to the type of work that they did. Average weekly working hours were lowest for those currently working in delivery. In contrast pupils working in supermarkets and fast food outlets on average committed the highest amount of time to work (14.00 and 14.22 hours per week on average).

Table 6.5: Current workers: average number of hours worked per week by type of job

6.14 The average working hours of pupils currently in employment also varied slightly in respect of their attainment, the highest attaining pupils had the lowest average working hours although the differences are small (Table 6.6). Social class variations were also apparent though slight, with working class and 'missing' groups having the highest average hours, 10.19 and 11.22 respectively (Table 6.7).

Table 6.6: Current workers: average number of hours worked per week by Standard Grade level

Table 6.7: Current workers: average number of hours worked per week by social class

6.15 When we considered location, we found that current workers in rural areas had the highest average number of working hours per week (Table 6.8).

Table 6.8: Current workers: average number of hours worked per week by location

The range of pupils' working hours

6.16 Average working hours are useful but they do not show the variation in the hours that pupils work so we also examined the range of working hours. The survey results show that the hours that pupils worked varied considerably ranging from 1 to 30+ hours per week . Figure 6.6 shows the extent of variation: overall around two-thirds of current workers were working between one and ten hours (64%); a fifth worked 11-15 hours while the rest were employed for over 16 hours per week (17%) of whom 6% worked more than 20 hours (see also Table 27, Appendix 1).

Figure 6.6: Current workers: hours worked per week

Table 6.9: Current workers: hours worked per week by school year

6.17 Previous research indicates that for younger pupils under 16, working more than 10 hours a week is associated with a negative effect on school work (McKechnie and Hobbs, 2001); for older pupils the critical threshold may be higher, around 16 hours per week (Payne, 2001, McKechnie et al, 2002). It is evident from Table 5.9 that a substantial minority of younger pupils, especially those in S4 were employed for more than the 10 hour threshold (S4: 28%; S3: 18%, Table 6.9). In the case of S5 pupils, 17% were employed for more than the critical level of 16 hours a week as were more than a quarter of S6 pupils (27%, Table 6.9). It appears that while a majority of current workers were employed for what might be seen as a reasonable number of hours, a substantial minority were working longer hours at a level that is associated with a detrimental effect on their school work.

Number of days worked each week

6.18 Well over half of the current workers were employed for two days a week or less - 27% for one day and 30% for two days (Figure 6.7 and Table 28, Appendix 1). Another 18% worked three days. There was some difference by gender, young women were more likely to work a smaller number of days than were young men. This may reflect gender differences in job type, for example, males are more likely to work in the delivery sector.

6.19 Table 6.10 shows the number of days worked according to year group, illustrating that overall S6s tended to be working more days than the other year groups. It also shows that a higher proportion of S3s (and to a lesser extent S4s) worked for six or seven days a week. Further analysis indicated that although these pupils were working a high number of days in the week, they were not working a high number of hours. It appears that most of these pupils were employed in jobs such as delivery where they had to work for a few hours on a daily basis, we found, for example, that 83% of the S3 pupils who worked for six days were employed in delivery work (the remainder were split between retail, cleaning and 'other').

Figure 6.7: Current workers: number of days usually worked per week

Table 6.10: Current workers: number of days usually worked per week by school year

Weekday and weekend working

6.20 As well as the number of hours and days that pupils work in their part-time job, when they work them is also important. In particular, to what extent do they work at times that might impinge directly on their school experience? To answer this question we asked pupils for details of the pattern of their working week. This is a complicated area to collect information on in a self-completion questionnaire and, not unexpectedly, more than half of current workers did not answer it. The response rate was 45% with a bias towards older pupils, girls and the higher attaining pupils. The findings that we present on this therefore cannot be seen as fully representative of all current workers.

6.21 We divided pupils' working week into three categories:

• times that directly precede a school day, this includes Sunday evening through to Friday morning; for simplicity we refer to this as 'weekday work' although it does include Sunday evening;
• times that do not precede a school day, this includes Friday evening through to Sunday morning, and again for simplicity we refer to this as 'weekend work';
• both weekdays and weekend.

6.22 We found that 49% of current workers who answered this question worked both during the week and at weekends, 41% did only weekend work (Table 6.11). Few worked only on weekdays (11%). Young women were more likely to work only at weekends than were young men, whose working pattern was more likely to include both weekdays and weekend work.

Table 6.11: Current pupils: pattern of their working week

6.23 While current workers in S6 were most likely to be working over both weekdays and weekends (59% 'both times', Table 6.12), substantial proportions of pupils in all year groups did so, for example 46% of S3 and S4 pupils (Table 6.12). A higher proportion of S3 and S4 pupils only worked weekdays.

Table 6.12: Current pupils: pattern of their working week

6.24 Finally, Table 6.13 shows pupils' working pattern in relation to their type of work; the pattern of work of those employed in delivery and in babysitting varied most from the overall picture.

Table 6.13: Current pupils: pattern of their working week by type of job

The average pay rates of current workers

6.25 The average hourly pay rate of current workers was £4.72 (Table 6.14). ⁸ Young men received a higher average hourly rate than their female counterparts (£5.22 vs £ 4.34). In Britain, the Minimum Wage level for 16-17 year olds is £3.00 per hour (there is no Minimum Wage for under-16s) and so current workers were earning, on average, £1.72 above the Minimum Wage. This applied across all year groups. Indeed, current workers in S3 had the highest average pay rates (Table 6.15). There was, however, more variation in pay rates among S3s than any of the other year groups, shown by the standard deviation ⁹.

Table 6.14: Current workers: average hourly pay rate*

* Standard deviation in brackets

Table 6.15: Current workers - average hourly rate by school stage*

* Standard deviation in brackets

6.26 Average hourly pay rates varied across types of jobs with the highest average rates occurring in door-to- door sales and in delivery work and the lowest in hairdressing, 'other' shop work and fast food outlets (Table 6.16). Nevertheless, average hourly rates were above the Minimum Wage level of £3.00 in all job sectors.

Table 6.16: Current workers - average hourly rate by type of job

6.27 Turning to average weekly earning, the average amount earned by current workers was £36.63 per week; young men earned just over £2 on average more than young women (Table 6.17).

Table 6.17: Current workers: average pay per week*

* Standard deviation in brackets

6.28 Average weekly earnings varied considerably according to school stage with S3s earning an average of £27 while S6 pupils' average weekly pay was £50.79 (Table 6.18). The difference in the weekly pay across year groups is due to the higher number of hours that the older pupils are working rather than higher hourly pay rates.

Table 6.18: Current workers: average pay per week by school stage*

* Standard deviation in brackets

6.29 Table 6.19 shows the variation in current workers' average weekly pay according to job type and shows a different pattern compared with average hourly earnings. While current workers who delivered newspapers had one of the highest average hourly rates of pay, their average weekly earnings were the lowest at £19.60. Pupils working in supermarkets had the highest average weekly earnings at £57.67; they tended to be older pupils working for longer hours.

Table 6.19: How much do you usually earn per week by job type

The range of current workers' earnings

6.30 Average pay rates while useful, do not reveal the extent of variation in pay rates. To consider this we looked at the range of earnings amongst current workers. Excluding a very small number of extreme cases, current workers hourly pay rates ranged from 65 pence to £40 an hour. Table 6.19 reveals that a substantial minority were earning less than £3 an hour, the hourly Minimum Wage for 16-17 year olds (22%, Figure 6.8 and Table 29, Appendix 1). The hourly rate of the bulk of current workers was below £6.00 an hour (84%, Table 29 Appendix 1). A small minority earned £10 or more an hour (8%). Young women's hourly pay rates were generally less than those of young men. Among the current workers, young women were slightly more likely to be earning less than £3.00 an hour and also less likely to have the highest rates of pay, above £10 an hour (Figure 6.9 Table 29, Appendix 1)

Figure 6.8: Current workers' hourly pay rate (all)

Figure 6.9: Current workers' hourly pay rate

6.31 A higher proportion of current workers who were in S3 and S4 were paid less than £3.00 per hour than was the case for their counterparts in S5 and especially in S6 (Table 6.20). As we have noted the national Minimum Wage of £3.00 an hour does not cover under -16 year olds. Nevertheless, S3 and S4 pupils were also more likely to have hourly pay rates of more than £10 compared with pupils in the other year groups.

Table 6.20: Current workers' hourly pay rate by school stage

6.32 Table 6.21 shows that over half of the current workers who were employed in hairdressing received less than £3.00 an hour for their work (55%). A substantial proportion of those involved in babysitting also earned less than £3.00 an hour (41%, Table 6.21). Other types of work where substantial minorities of pupils were paid less than £3.00 an hour included: manual trades, farming; other delivery work and other shop work (31%, 30%, 30% and 28%, Table 6.21).

Table 6.21: Current workers' hourly pay rate by type of job

* pay categories between £3 and £5.99 combined

Holiday and sick pay

6.33 The majority of current workers did not receive holiday or sickness pay. However a sizeable minority of current employees did: 29% reported that they received holiday pay and 18% were paid when they were off work ill (Table 6.22); there is little difference between male and females. However, a clear difference is evident between S3/S4 pupils and those in S5 and especially S6 in the likelihood of receiving holiday pay. Over half of S6 pupils were paid when they were on holiday (57%) reflecting the more structured nature of their employment and that their employer was treating them in the same way as other part-time employees (Table 6.23). Sick pay follows a similar pattern with a higher proportion of S5 and S6 pupils being paid when they were off ill compared with S3 and S4s.

Table 6.22: Current workers: holiday and sick pay*

*excludes current workers who are self employed

Table 6.23: Current workers: holiday pay by school stage

* excludes current workers who are self employed

Few under-16 year olds had a work permit

6.34 As we noted in the introduction there is a body of legislation on the employment of school pupils under 16 years of age. A central aspect of this is the use of work permits to monitor the appropriateness of the employment. We asked pupils who were under 16 if they had a permit for the job that they were currently doing. We found that only 11% of the current workers who were under 16 had a permit and over a half stated specifically that they did not (55%, Table 6.24). It is notable that a quarter of those under 16 who were working did not know if they had a permit or not. Since the onus is on the pupil rather than the employer or school to apply for a permit, it is extremely likely that most of the pupils who responded that they did not know if they had one, did not actually have a permit. These results are in line with previous research. They are also consistent with the findings from our survey of local authorities who are responsible for the permit system. The local authority survey indicated that the present permit system is not operating effectively; we return to this issue in chapter 12 (see also Appendix G.8, Child Employment: Policy and Practice in Scotland).

Table 6.24: Current workers under 16: if have a permit for their job

Who do pupils work for?

6.35 A large majority of school pupils who were currently in a part-time job were working for an employer outside the family (82% other employer; 15% parent/other family member, Table 6.25). Only a very small proportion worked for themselves (2%). Overall, there is little difference between young women and young men in relation to their type of employer. There is a move away from employment by parents or other family members as pupils get older, this declines across the school stages so that by S6 only 6% of current workers were employed by their family compared with 25% of S3s (Table 32, Appendix 1).

Table 6.25: Current workers: who employed by

6.36 Pupils were asked for the name of the business that they worked for and on the basis of their responses we categorized their employers into 'major' employers and 'other' employers. Under a third of current workers were employed by major employers (Figure 6.10). There was little difference by gender but substantial differences across the year groups are evident. S3 and S4 pupils were less likely to be employed by major businesses compared with current workers in S5 and especially in S6 current workers (Figure 6.10 and Table 33, Appendix 1). We consider the implications of the type of employer pupils work for further in chapter 8 when we examine the issue of the quality of pupils' part-time work.

Figure 6.10: Current workers: whether employed by a major employer by school stage

The role of pupils' family and friends in finding work

6.37 Table 6.26 shows the role of young people's informal network of information in helping them to find a part-time job. Parents or other family members were the most reported source of information about jobs. This finding is in line with the data presented in chapter 3 on the relationship between parental unemployment and pupils' part-time work status. Just over a third of current workers had heard about their job from their parents or other family members (34%). Friends were another important source of contacts (22%). An interesting variation in this data is that 10% of current workers stated that they heard about their job by their employer approaching them. A similar proportion of current workers had contacted employers directly themselves. Young women were slightly more likely than their male counterparts to have heard about their job from family rather than from friends but the differences are only small. The role of the family is more pronounced for younger pupils, 40% of S3s heard about their job via their family compared with 25% of S6s (Table 6.27). As pupils get older they are more likely to have contacted employers themselves, 19% of S6s did so, compared with 6% of S3s.

Table 6.26: Current workers: how they heard about this job

Table 6.27: Pupils currently working: main way heard about their job: by school year

6.38 Table 6.28 shows the relationship between current workers enterprising attitudes score and how they heard about their present job. A higher percentage of pupils with the lowest enterprising attitudes scores indicated that their parents/guardians had been the main source of information compared to those with the highest scores (36% vs. 33%). However, the trend is not consistent across the range of enterprise scores. A more consistent trend emerges where friends are the main information source. In this instance a higher percentage of those with low enterprise scores indicated that friends had been the main source of information. This source declines in importance as their enterprising attitudes score increase.

6.39 Approximately one in ten pupils indicated that they had visited or contacted employers to get their present job. In comparison with pupils with low enterprise scores a higher percentage of pupils with the highest enterprise scores indicated that this had been their main source of information about their current job.

Table 6.28: Pupils currently working: main way heard about their job: by enterprising attitudes

Overview

6.40 Pupils who were currently in part-time work were concentrated in three sectors: retail, catering and delivery. There were clear gender differences: delivery was very much a male dominated sector while females pre-dominated in retail and catering. The type of work that pupils did varied across the year groups with a move from less structured to more formal types of employment. Pupils generally worked in the same type of jobs irrespective of their attainment or social class background; differences in these respects were limited. Delivery work was less prevalent in rural areas where pupils were more likely to work in the catering sector. Within the retail sector, there were urban/rural differences in the type of shop work pupils did. We consider the question of the quality of different types of jobs later in the report but the variation in the type of work that pupils did is likely to have implications for the issue of recognition.

6.41 The time that pupils devote to their part-time job is a common issue of interest and often concern. We found that most current workers had one job and worked an average of 9.90 hours a week. Average working hours rose over the school stages and varied considerably by type of job (stage and type of job are related). Overall, a majority, around two-thirds, worked for 10 hours or less a week, a level which previous research suggests is not associated with a negative effect on school work. Although a majority of pupils were therefore working a reasonable number of hours, we nevertheless found that a substantial minority of pupils were working beyond the relevant critical number of hours for their age. Well over half worked for two days a week or less with S6 pupils working more days than other year groups. Our data on when pupils worked is limited but indicates that around half did so both during the week and at weekends; most of the remaining half worked only at weekends.

6.42 We saw in the previous chapter that earning money was a key reason for pupils to work part-time. The average weekly earning of current workers were £36.63 and older pupils, especially S6s, had considerably higher average weekly earning due to the higher number of hours they generally worked.

6.43 Gender differences are apparent in the type of work that pupils do and in average weekly earning; young men and young women tended to work in different types of jobs and young women earned on average less than young men. In these respects, pupils' part-time employment mirrors the gender segregation and lower female earnings in the workplace more generally.

6.44 There is sometimes concern that pupils are paid unduly low wages by employers. Examining this, we found that average hourly rate of pay of current workers was £4.72 which is above the national Minimum Wage of £3.00 set for 16-17 year olds. Average hourly pay rates were higher than £3.00 in all types of jobs. But while average pay rates seem to be reasonable, when we examined the range of pupils' hourly earnings, it emerged that a substantial minority of current workers earned less than £3.00 an hour, especially younger pupils and those working in certain types of jobs such as hairdressing and babysitting.

6.45 Although most current workers did not receive holiday or sick pay, S6 pupils were much more likely to do so reflecting the more structured type of employment that they do and suggesting that they had the same terms and conditions as other (non pupil) part-time employees.

6.46 Pupils under the age of 16 who have a part-time job should have a work permit (issued by their local authority) but only 11% had one. This finding is in line with the results from our survey of local authorities. We return to the matter of work permits later in the report when we consider some of the legislative issues that any formal recognition of pupils' part-time work will raise.

6.47 Pupils were very unlikely to have started their own business (2%) and a minority worked for family or friends. Most pupils were thus working in the open job market. Older pupils were more likely to be employed by major employers and this is likely to be relevant to recognition issues.

6.48 It is clear that pupils' family and friends play an important role in helping them to find a part-time job and this is especially true for younger pupils. This implies that where pupils' family and friends do not have the necessary contacts or where pupils lack a network of family and friends, then they will face greater difficulty in gaining part-time work.

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