ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how young people make transitions from compulsory schooling into work, or increasingly, into education and training. It focuses on young people in industrialised societies in the Global North, where opportunities for further study are growing and becoming more diverse. Although transitions from school are often framed in terms of individual choice and aspiration, evidence of inequalities in post-school outcomes suggests that society continues to shape the prospects for young people. The chapter also explores the outcomes for young people and how these relate to their economic position, ethnicity and gender. The notion of extending the transition to adulthood can be pushed further by examining the options young people take up upon finally leaving school. In the late 1990s and the first decade of the twenty-first century, key global bodies argued that modern economies were undergoing a transformation.
