YLYF cross-European symposium

On 13^th-14^th September in Belgrade, Serbia, we hosted a cross-European symposium on achieving success and equity in the post-16 transitions of young people who don’t go to university. We were delighted to be joined by researchers from across Europe to learn about post-16 transitions in Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, Russia, Czechia, Germany, England, Scotland and Sweden. 

Several key themes emerged from our discussions: 

• How young people experience their transitions and exercise agency. 

• The role of place in shaping young people’s transitions. 

• Careers and transitions support and the role of teachers in this. 

• Post-16 education participation and assessment policy and practice. 

The symposium helped to foster cross-European dialogue and provide an opportunity to look comparatively across different national contexts. We would like to thank all participants for their insightful presentations and discussion points. 

Symposium programme:

• Navigating remedial and compensatory trajectories: how disadvantaged students make sense of their transitions 

Joakim Lindgren 

• “Well, some of us have to stay and just make the best of it”: Complexity and compromise in the transitions of young working-class people in rural Scotland

  Charlotte McPherson 

  
  

• Spatial Factors in the Educational Trajectories of Upper Secondary Students 

Dominik Dvořák 

• Peer Effects in A-Level Institutions: FE as a Socio-Cultural, Interactional Field 

Ryan Wattam 

• Forced to Stay or Inspired to Learn? Rethinking Compulsory Education Through England’s Participation Age Policy 

Maria Jose Ventura Alfaro

• School and Vocational Orientation: Teachers' Perspectives on their Students in the Transition from School to Vocational Education and Training and their Counselling and Support Services 

André Epp 

• Vocational Educator Training as a Structural Condition for Equitable School-to-Work Transitions: From Digital Access to Practice-Oriented Learning 

Nataliia Dolgova 

• Challenges in supporting youth NEETs in career guidance in Western Balkan countries  

Oliana Sula 

• Re-imagining ‘work’ in School-To-Work Transitions (STWT): can records of achievement support a capabilities approach to STWT? 

Stephanie Thompson