Persistent Disadvantages or New Opportunities? The Role of Agency and Structural Constraints for Low-Achieving Adolescents’ School-to-Work Transitions

Abstract

School leavers with low educational attainment face great difficulties in their school-to-work transitions. They are, however, quite heterogeneous in terms of their personal and social resources. These within-group differences may influence who shows initiative during the school-to-work transition period and thereby helps employers recognize their learning potential at labor market entry. Yet this recognition also depends on the ways employers select applicants, which may prevent them from discovering such within-group differences. We therefore investigate the interplay between agency and its constraints, that is, whether higher cognitive and noncognitive skills and more parental resources provide low-achieving school leavers with new opportunities in the school-to-work transition period or whether their low school attainment causes the persistency of their disadvantages. We use panel data from the German National Educational Panel Study (NEPS), which started in grade 9. The NEPS also includes school leavers from special-needs schools. Our sample consists of 3417 low-achieving adolescents (42% female), defined as adolescents who leave school with no or only a lower secondary school-leaving certificate. Their average school-leaving age is 16 to 17 years. Our key findings are that the transition period opens up new opportunities only for those low-achieving adolescents with better vocational orientation and higher career aspirations, leading them to make stronger application efforts. The success of youth’s initiative varies considerably by school-leaving certificate and school type but not by competences, noncognitive characteristics, and parental background. Thus, the label of “having low qualifications” is a major obstacle in this transition period—especially for the least educated subgroup. Their poor school attainment strongly disadvantages them when accessing the required training to become economically independent and hence in their general transition to adulthood. Our results are also of interest internationally, because participation in firm-based training programs functions as the entry labor market in Germany. Thus, similar explanations may apply to low-achieving adolescents’ difficulties in finding a job. © 2017, Springer Science+Business Media, LLC.

Keywords

Author Keywords

Competencies vocational education and training Germany Agency Entry into the labor market Low-achieving adolescents

Index Keywords

Skill attitude to health female human male psychology Humans adolescent educational status Vocational education academic success motivation controlled study employer Germany career major clinical study adulthood school Schools high school adolescent behavior parent socioeconomics aspiration Parents mental capacity panel study market Socioeconomic Factors Aspirations (Psychology)

Author Affiliations

Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin fur Sozialforschung, Berlin, Berlin, Germany, Institute of Sociology, Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin, Berlin, Germany

Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin fur Sozialforschung, Berlin, Berlin, Germany

Funding & Acknowledgements

Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, DFG

Grant: SO 430/8-1

Funding text 1: This article uses data from the National Educational Panel Study (NEPS). From 2008 to 2013, NEPS data was collected as part of the Framework Program for the Promotion of Empirical Educational Research funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). As of 2014, NEPS is carried out by the Leibniz Institute for Educational Trajectories (LIfBi) at the University of Bamberg in cooperation with a nationwide network. We would like to thank Jennifer Schauer and Madeleine Siegel for their assistance, Ralf Künster for helping with editing the NEPS data, the members of the research unit “Skill Formation and Labor Markets” at the WZB as well as the four anonymous reviewers and the editor of the journal for their helpful comments and support; and Carsten Bösel for his language assistance.; Funding text 2: The article was supported by the DFG—German Research Foundation (grant number: SO 430/8-1).

Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung, BMBF

Funding text 1: This article uses data from the National Educational Panel Study (NEPS). From 2008 to 2013, NEPS data was collected as part of the Framework Program for the Promotion of Empirical Educational Research funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). As of 2014, NEPS is carried out by the Leibniz Institute for Educational Trajectories (LIfBi) at the University of Bamberg in cooperation with a nationwide network. We would like to thank Jennifer Schauer and Madeleine Siegel for their assistance, Ralf Künster for helping with editing the NEPS data, the members of the research unit “Skill Formation and Labor Markets” at the WZB as well as the four anonymous reviewers and the editor of the journal for their helpful comments and support; and Carsten Bösel for his language assistance.; Funding text 2: The article was supported by the DFG—German Research Foundation (grant number: SO 430/8-1).

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Persistent Disadvantages or New Opportunities? The Role of Agency and Structural Constraints for Low-Achieving Adolescents’ School-to-Work Transitions

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