Policy Support Centre: ‘Pathways through education and the transition from school to work’

The main objective of the Policy Support Centre is the construction of datafiles that allow analysis of the different paths young people take from primary schooling to entrance into the labour market. The Centre consists of two main units with a different focus. Unit A’s focus is on ‘Careers in Education’, aiming primarily at the construction and analysis of data files on pupil’s careers in primary education. Unit B’s focus is on the ‘Transition from School to Work’, with the construction of a longitudinal database on the way Flemish young people make the transition from the educational system to the labour market as a prime task. The Department of Sociology of the Free University Brussels participates in this second unit. The research programme of this unit is in fact the logical continuation of the previous projects by the interuniversity research group SONAR (Flemish acronym for Research Group from Education to the Labour Market). SONAR was founded following the research initiatives of the Department of Education of the Flemish Community, on the way young people make the transition from school to work. Within this framework, three surveys have already been carried out: in the fall of 1999 3000 young people born in 1976 were interviewed (at the age of 23), in 2001 the same happened for 3000 23-year-olds born in 1978, and repeated interviews in 2002 of the respondents of birth cohort 1976 at the age of 26. Financed by the policy support centre this project includes the survey of a new birth cohort (1980) in 2003 (at the age of 23), the completion of the data of birth cohort 1978 till the age of 26 (in 2004), and the completion of data of birth cohort 1976 till the age of 29 (in 2005).