The way in which young people's post-school intentions and pathways reflect their social background has been the subject of a good deal of research. However, much less attention has been paid to social differentiation in the amount and kind of career guidance information received by young people and its role in reinforcing or ameliorating social…

Educational expectations and the way in which they shape actual outcomes act as an important vehicle for the intergenerational reproduction of social inequality. This article draws on rich information from the Growing Up in Ireland longitudinal study to explore the factors influencing the educational expectations of 13-year-old young people and…

David Raffe was a highly influential figure in the field of transitions research. His work carefully delineated how national institutional policies shape transition processes and outcomes. Curriculum structure and organisation were seen as key features of these transition systems, his work tracing the relative impact of vocational and academic…

This paper examines the relative importance of upper secondary subject choice and attainment in explaining social inequalities in access to higher education (HE) in Scotland and Ireland. These two countries differ in the extent of curriculum differentiation, in the degree of standardisation in school examination and in HE entry criteria. In…

Across many countries, young people are differentiated into academic and vocational tracks, a pattern that is closely related to their social class background. The Irish secondary system has been largely undifferentiated, but the introduction of a pre-vocational programme, the Leaving Certificate Applied (LCA), has brought an element of tracking…

Private tuition, or "shadow education", has become a prominent feature in many countries internationally. A number of studies have found that such tuition is associated with improved examination performance and enhanced access to tertiary education. However, these studies have generally not taken into account important attitudinal…

Ireland has experienced an unprecedented level of economic growth since the mid-1990s. The present article assesses the extent to which this phenomenon has altered the level and nature of youth unemployment, using data from six waves of a nationally representative survey of school-leavers. The main impact of the "Celtic Tiger" has been…

This paper explores the way in which truancy levels are structured by individual social class and the social mix of the school within the Republic of Ireland, where limited research is available on the relationship between truancy and student outcomes. Drawing on a national survey of young people, truancy levels were found to be higher among…

Previous research has indicated significant variation between schools in the proportion of their students who go on to higher education. However, relatively little attention has been paid to the specific school characteristics influencing application and entry to tertiary education. This paper sets out to analyse the individual and school factors…