ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the experiences of a year group of young people who had been in fourth year of secondary school in Scotland in 1983/4. It presents the analysis which is based on two distinctions. The first is between internal and external recruitment from Youth Training Scheme (YTS). The second is that between the content and context of education and training. YTS is fighting to maintain its position in a tightening youth labour market in the face of pressures on employers to reduce training and to use higher wages to attract ‘good’ young workers. The variation in YTS leaving profiles across different school qualification groups partly reflected these occupational differences. Internal recruits were more likely than external recruits to have completed their schemes; they were also more likely to have gained qualifications from YTS. The transition from YTS to work was in many respects smoother and more continuous for the internal recruits.
