Abstract
A decade or so ago, the choices facing British 16 year olds seemed relatively straightforward; either they stayed on in education or they left to enter the youth labour market. The subsequent rise in youth unemployment and the consequent series of government‐led responses have complicated the picture. But how complex has the post‐16 transition from school actually become? Does it still make sense to talk of the dominant ‘routes’ young people follow and, if so, how differentiated are they? The paper uses the detailed survey data from the four areas in the ESRC's 16‐19 Initiative and further data on large nationally‐representative samples of young people drawn from the Youth Cohort Study to explore the opportunity structures that have been emerging in Britain during the eighties.

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