| Summary: | This thesis is about transitions made between education and employment by young people in Sheffield at age 16 and 17. School to work transitions are complex, nonlinear and at times chaotic, and the way young people experience them can have a lasting effect on the rest of their adult life. Through a combination of interviews with young workers and a set of statistical analytical techniques collectively known as sequence analysis, this thesis explores the ways in which young people negotiate the post-16 options available to them. It focuses on the learning journeys taken by individuals in the two years after compulsory schooling and considers the value to current and future career trajectories added by the presence and position within them of Jobs Without Training (JWTs). Through collaboration with Sheffield City Council, the research makes use of longitudinal administrative data on full school-leaving cohorts. It is deeply grounded in the local context and service structures and in the interaction between national policy, local practices, and academic understandings. The findings have implications for how young people's post-16 destinations are understood. The reclassification of young people in JWT (under legislation to raise the participation age) from a policy-good to a policy-bad status does not naturally align with young workers' own perceptions. The thesis analyses the value of JWTs for their potential as bridges between destinations as well as for their own merit. The pressures facing young people from family, peers and institutions as well as from financial strain, caring duties and health problems lead conclusions to be drawn about the implementation of career plans and the time delays sometimes needed in order to achieve them. The thesis concludes by making a case for conceptualising post-16 pathways differently and for dismissing approaches which classify young people in Jobs Without Training as an homogeneous group.
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