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Stage 6 of the German National Educational Panel Study is devoted to youth's transitions from school into the labor market. In all Western societies, vocational education and training (VET) systems face a number of challenges, including the need to adapt to increasing skill requirements across the economy and handle the danger of producing an "underclass" of low-skilled youth. This chapter presents the life-course approach for investigating school-leavers' pathways from school into the labor market within the National Educational Panel Study. Several factors shape young people's school-to-work transitions: their motivation and competence endowment, their decisions concerning further course of education, the constraints they face both concerning opportunities for VET and gatekeepers' recruitment behavior, the information and support youths may or may not receive from social networks, and the learning environments they 252 W. Ludwig-Mayerhofer et al.encounter in firms and schools. We shall outline the basic theories that will guide our research concerning these influences and discuss how they are taken into account within stage 6 of the National Educational Panel Study. Thus, we will give a picture of the study's research potential in the area of VET.

Stage 6 of the German National Educational Panel Study (NEPS) 6 is devoted to the transition of young people from school to work. Stage 6 focuses in particular on the transition from school to vocational education and training and then to work (for tertiary education, see Chap. 16). In all Western societies, vocational education and training (VET) systems face a number of challenges, including the need to adapt to increasing skill requirements across the economy and to handle the danger of producing an "underclass" of low-skilled youth. This chapter presents the life-course approach for investigating school-leavers' pathways from school into the labor market within NEPS. Several factors shape young people's school-to-work transitions: their motivation and competence endowment, their decisions to apply for specific educational programs, the constraints they face regarding the opportunities for VET programs and the gatekeepers' recruitment behavior, the information and support youths may or may not receive from social networks, and the learning environments they encounter in firms and schools. We outline the basic theories that guide our research concerning these influences and discuss how we take them into account within NEPS Stage 6. Thus, we provide an overview of the study's research potential in the area of VET. For now, it is mainly the Scientific Use Files of Starting Cohort 4 (SC4) that provide ample opportunities for innovative interdisciplinary analyses-including analyses of students from special education schools. As the starting cohorts age, Starting Cohort 3 (SC3) has now also entered NEPS Stage 6 and its data on VET transitions will soon be available as well.

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