ABSTRACT
Successful school-to-work transition requires students to have a sound understanding both of relevant competences as well as the labor market structure. This chapter focuses on the second element of a successful transition: analyzing what students want to be as adults (i.e., their self-expected occupation and the likelihood of achieving it). The chapter presents an analysis of self-expected occupation of students in PISA 2015 and identifies two major disconnections: (1) across economies, students in low-performing participating economies expect high levels of labor force sophistication, surpassing the current and expected sophistication levels of high-performing PISA participant economies; and (2) within economies, low-performing students in low-performing participant economies have a higher probability of self-expecting to join an occupation that requires a high level of ability, increasing their likelihood of failure. The chapter calls for improved efforts to improve education quality and provide better information on students in relation to the labor market structure to reduce or eliminate the identified disconnected expectations.
