Continuing training goes first to the best trained

The rate of access to training rises with qualification level, with firm size and with the skill level of the post. The gap between the most and least trained categories is a multiple, not a few points.

That finding is found in all European surveys on continuing vocational training, at varying levels but with a gradient of the same sign everywhere. Sociologists recognise in it a Matthew effect, in Robert Merton's 1968 phrase: advantages go to those who already have them.

In France, the system has rested since the 1971 law on a funding obligation on firms. That framework greatly increased the volume of training without changing the distribution of access between categories.

Proposed explanations concern the return expected by the employer, higher for skilled posts, the ability to organise the absence, and the demand expressed by employees themselves.

The last is measured in several surveys and finds lower demand in the least trained categories, a result itself associated with earlier schooling experience. Interpreting that lower demand as a simple lack of interest would be reductive: it may reflect a clear-sighted anticipation of smaller benefits.

Individual training accounts, adopted in France and several countries, aimed to bypass the employer by granting rights directly to people. The French personal training account, created in 2015, has been credited in euros since 2019.

Available evaluations find higher take-up among already qualified people, which reproduces the gradient the scheme was meant to correct. Explanations concern information, the ability to choose a course and the availability of time.

Measuring the effect of training on trajectories requires comparing trained people with comparable untrained people, a biased comparison since access is not random. Those who train are often those whose trajectory would have been more favourable anyway.

The few available experiments concern programmes for jobseekers and find positive but modest effects, growing with time elapsed since the training. The meta-analyses by David Card, Jochen Kluve and Andrea Weber on active labour market policies find the same profile, with clearer effects after two or three years than in the short term.

Evaluations distinguishing types of training find very different effects depending on whether it is a recognised certification, a short internal course or an awareness session.

Access statistics aggregate those three categories, which limits interpreting a high access rate as a favourable indicator. An access rate counts an hour of awareness training and several months of qualifying training in the same way, while the length of training followed also varies between categories.