The school-to-work transition in the United Kingdom

(1996) - Robert M Lindley

Journal: International Labour Review
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Tags:: #paper #school-to-work #Transition
Cite Key:: [@Lindley1996]

Abstract

ritish research suggests that young people are extremely resourceful, capable of adjustment to abrupt changes in status, and manage to reconcile themselves to the reality of the labour market. Yet much has been heard over more than a decade of the need to prolong the transition phase between compulsory education and employment. Does the world of work really require quite so much more of young people than it did before? Or is the emphasis on transition primarily a response to that other body of research evidence which shows that young people are hurt by unemployment? From this perspective, the transition arrangements are seen as a second-best solution which offers a constructive but temporary alternative to unemployment. In either case, however, the rationale for lengthening the transition phase, by introducing additional education, training and work experience, depends crucially on there being suitable jobs available for young people eventually, preferably well before they have ceased to be young.

Notes

"As regards the mid-1980s especially it would, indeed, seem wrong to attribute high youth unemployment or underemployment primarily to poor school preparation for the transition to work" (Lindley :24)

"The explanation must be found in the labour market and its economic environment." (Lindley :24)

"In the recession of the early 1990s, there appeared to be much less of a risk of a return to the high levels of underlying youth unemployment which had previously triggered such a remarkable volume of policy activity across the boundaries between employment, training schemes and unemployment." (Lindley :29)

"At the same time, lengthening the transition from the end of compulsory schooling to full-time employment is no longer regarded as being problematical." (Lindley :42)

"It provides an opportunity for individuals to re-orientate themselves more in line with their own preferences before taking further steps which may be difficult to retrace; the image of young people is one of throwing off the constraints of initial social class and socialization, repairing the damage done by defective education and/or inappropriate educational choices, changing residence arrangements (possibly location), and stepping forward on a path of one's own choosing" (Lindley :42)

"Extending the first transition places strains not only on the capacity to manage that process of change but also upon the other two transitions, because they depend greatly for their context upon the progress achieved with the first." (Lindley :43)

Strain on a linear interpretation of transitions is an interesting thing to look into (note on p.43)