Leaving school, whether to move on to training, work or education, is a fundamental rite of passage the world over. This volume draws on a wealth of international sources and studies in its analysis of the 'transitions' young students make as they move on from their secondary schooling. It identifies how these transitions are planned for by policymakers, enacted by school staff and engaged with by students themselves. With data from a range of nations with advanced industrial economies, the book delineates how the policies relating to these transitions need to be conceived and implemented, how the transitions themselves are negotiated by young people, and how they might be shaped to meet the varied needs of the students they are designed to help. The authors argue that the relationship, often complex, between what schools provide in the way of preparation, and the ways in which students take up what is on offer, is the crucial nexus for understanding the experience of transitions by young people, and for enhancing that experience. With a host of case studies of transition policies themselves, as well as evaluative data on how they were received by the school leavers whom they were designed for, this valuable addition to the educational literature deserves to be read by all those with roles in preparing the young for their journey into a complex adult world full of pitfalls as well as opportunity.

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Section A: School transitions: Overview, policy orientations and theorizations.- Experiences of school transitions: Policies, practice and participants, Stephen Billett, Greer Johnson.- Reconciling the system world with the life worlds of young adults: Where next for youth transition policies?, Karen Evans.- Bridging school and work: a person-in-context model for enabling resilience in at-risk youth, Christopher DeLuca, Nancy L. Hutchinson, Joan Versnel, Jennifer Dods, Peter Chin.- Section B: Imperatives for and practices of transitions: International perspectives.- The American Shortcut to VET: Global Policy Borrowing for the Post-16 Educational Arena, Richard D. Lakes, Antje Barabasch.- Access, coping and relevance of education in youth transitions: The German transition system between labour society and knowledge society, Andreas M Walther.- Making the transition to post-school life: The Canadian situation, Wolfgang Lehmann.- School-to-work transitions in apprenticeship-based systems: The example of Switzerland, Barbara Stalder.- Governing Schooling, People and Practices: Australian Policies on Transitions, Sue Thomas, Stephen Hay.- Section C: Experiences of schooling: Contemporary practices and experiences.- Researching transition experiences in Australian senior schooling , Jill Ryan, Stephen Billett, Greer Johnson.- Excluded from the game: A case study of transitions for non-tertiary-bound students in a Queensland private school, Stephen Hay, Cheryl Sim.- Pathways and Choice: transitions at Sunny Beach College, Sue Thomas, Jill Ryan.- A critical focus on family-school-community partnerships: St Jude's Secondary College transition program for at-risk students, Greer Johnson, Stephen Billett.- Making the transition from interrupted schooling experience: Perspectives of recent school leavers, Esther Beltermann, Jill Ryan, Stephen Billett.- The translation of transitions policies into school enactment, Cheryl Sim, Stephen Hay, Greer Johnson, Sue Thomas.