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In the 1980s and 1990s the study of education-work transitions took a comparative, cross-national turn. Researchers sought to identify national differences in transition processes and outcomes and explain them in terms of institutional characteristics of national 'transition systems'. This was an ambitious aim because it required the study of transitions to develop as a field of 'macro' social-science research, while continuing also to use theories, techniques of analysis and data associated with 'micro' research. This paper reviews the progress of transition-system research over the past 20 years. It describes the development of the research field and how it has been shaped by its theoretical origins, the political context, the availability of data and the organisation of research. The research has made significant if uneven progress towards explaining national differences in transitions; its achievements appear more significant when viewed from a perspective which emphasises the case-oriented rather than variables-oriented aims of comparative research.

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This chapter concludes the complete volume. It provides an overview of the integration of youth in the workforce, covering individual, institutional and structural factors which contribute to the process. The chapter reviews current trends and highlights differences in systems between EU countries. The complete volume is reflected on and some ideas are generated regarding future developments contributing to the education and work transition process.

The complete volume is indexed at TD/TNC 76.404 and individual chapters are indexed from TD/TNC 76.405 to TD/TNC 76.414. Show less

This article reports on research carried out under the Economic and Social Research Council's (ESRC's) Learning Society Programme. The program comprised 14 projects involving research into the learning society and the ways in which it can contribute to the development of knowledge and skills for employment and in other areas of adult life. The article is one of a series of comparative studies which explore notions of lifelong learning, learning organisation and learning society in Europe and, in some cases, reflect on the use of comparative research in the social sciences. Education systems in the United Kingdom (UK) are developing strategies for 'unifying', or at least linking, academic and vocational learning. The Unified Learning Project (ULP) compares these developments in postcompulsory education and training in Scotland with those in England and Wales. This research is complemented by a European study across eight countries of strategies to promote parity of esteem between vocational and academic learning in post-16 education (the Post-16 Strategies project funded under the European Commission's Leonardo da Vinci program). The article focuses on the ULP with references to the European project. It begins with a brief discussion of the purposes of comparison in the ULP and then describes the main conceptual frameworks that have been developed as the basis for comparison. The final section of the article offers a provisional assessment of the role of comparison in the ULP in relation to the purposes discussed earlier.

The volume from which this article is taken is indexed at TD/TNC 67.176. Other publications from the ESRC Learning Society Programme are indexed at TD/TNC 67.145, TD/TNC 67.152, TD/TNC 67.169, TD/TNC 67.185, and TD/TNC 67.192. Show less

The [Scottish Credit and Qualifications Framework] SCQF is one of the longest-established comprehensive qualifications frameworks and is often perceived as one of the most successful. This article describes the main features of the SCQF and outlines its progress, drawing on recent studies and evaluations by the authors. It draws lessons for the [European Qualifications Framework] EQF and for further development of national frameworks to respond to it. These lessons concern the specific requirements of meta-frameworks and comprehensive frameworks, the need for realistic expectations and time scales, and the value of an incremental and pragmatic strategy for introducing a learning-outcomes approach. The article also identifies issues relating to the architecture of a levels framework and the limitations, as well as strengths, of a voluntary partnership-based approach.

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This article addresses two main questions: do young people leaving vocational upper-secondary education make more successful transitions to employment than leavers from academic upper-secondary education, or than leavers from lower-secondary education? And does this 'vocational effect' vary systematically across countries? The article distinguishes two ideal types of transition system, based on the strength of linkages between vocational education and employment, and governed respectively by an 'employment logic' and by an 'education logic'. The vocational effect is predicted to be stronger in systems governed by the employment logic. This prediction, together with other hypotheses based on the ideal types, is tested using school-leaver survey data for the Netherlands (representing the employment logic), Scotland (representing the education logic), and Ireland and Sweden (representing intermediate cases). The ideal types are broadly supported, subject to limitations of comparability of the data.

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The project uses data from the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS) to describe the social, demographic and educational characteristics of applicants and entrants to full-time undergraduate higher education (HE) in the UK since 1996, to analyse the changing nature of institutional differentiation, and to study differences across the four home countries of the UK and cross-border flows of applicants and entrants. This paper continues its descriptive mapping of the data and presents information on the characteristics of applicants and entrants. It also provides preliminary answers to the project's first two research questions: (1) In what ways have the social, demographic and educational characteristics of applicants and entrants to full-time HE changed over the period 1996-2010? Are there different trends across the four home countries? and (2) How successful are different types of applicants in gaining entry to at least one of their chosen higher education institutions? How have their success rates varied over the period 1996-2010 and across the four home countries?

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This paper is part of a project entitled 'The expression, experience and transcendence of low skills in Aotearoa New Zealand', which aims to provide policy recommendations to improve life-course trajectories and socio-economic outcomes of adults living with low literacy and/or numeracy (L+N) skills. The paper examines the life-course trajectories of a cohort of [New Zealand] NZ youth who participated in [Programme for International Student Assessment] PISA 2009 when they were 15-years old by using linked administrative data to track their outcomes until 2020. PISA is a worldwide study that assesses key competencies of 15-year-old students, with a focus on reading, mathematics and science. This paper compares the outcomes of the nearly one-fifth of NZ students who were assessed at below Level 2 in either reading or mathematics (or both), which the OECD considers to be a 'baseline' level of proficiency, with those at or above this baseline.

It finds that students with low measured skills have less favourable outcomes in a number of areas. They have lower rates of participation in, and completion of, further education. They also have lower employment rates and average earnings, with labour market differences between the low-skills and above-baseline groups being particularly stark among women. Those in the low-skills group also have higher rates of hospitalisation and non-admitted secondary care events, as well as higher rates of criminal offending and convictions. Outcomes for Maori in both the low-skills and above-baseline groups are less favourable than those of their NZ European counterparts. For example, Maori with above-baseline skills have similar average earnings to NZ Europeans in the low-skills group.

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This paper uses Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) data linked to administrative data to track the educational and labour market outcomes of young people. Students with lower skills have lower rates of participation in further education. While men with low skills out-earn their higher-skilled counterparts when they are very young, their earnings are overtaken by those with higher skills when they are in their early twenties and earn around 15 per cent less by the age of 25. The differences among women are substantially larger - women with low skills earn about 35 per cent less than their higher-skilled counterparts by age 25.

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The term ‘transition system’ describes features of a country’s institutional arrangements which shape young people’s education-work transitions. It explains why national differences in transition processes and outcomes persist despite apparent pressures for convergence. This paper asks how the concept of transition system has been conceptualised and operationalised by researchers, especially quantitative researchers analysing comparative survey data. It uses a four-level conceptual framework which is implicit in much of this research. Micro-level transition processes and outcomes (Level 1) may be aggregated or summarised to show national transition patterns (Level 2), which may be explained in terms of dimensions of national institutional variation (Level 3) or typologies of transition systems (Level 4). Research into transition systems can boast of empirical, theoretical and policy-related achievements, but it has been constrained by data limitations and theoretical eclecticism. It needs to develop theoretical frameworks to explain how transition systems themselves change and to move beyond a view of nation-states as homogeneous and independent units of analysis.

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In this article, we compare Curriculum 2000 and Higher Still, recent reforms of post-16 education in England and Scotland respectively. Current and earlier research on the unification of academic and vocational learning in England, Scotland and other European countries is drawn on in order to suggest areas for mutual learning to inform future curriculum and qualifications reform, both north and south of the Border. We highlight five of these: the conduct of the policy process, issues of progression, assessment, approaches to vocational education and key/core skills, and in our conclusion, we speculate on the possibility of either convergence or divergence of the English and Scottish upper secondary education systems as both evolve.

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