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In this article, first, we present new evidence on a specific type of compensatory advantage (CA) mechanism in educational transitions and attainment, whereby students from socio-economically advantaged families compensate the negative event of achieving poor grades by ignoring them and disproportionally moving on to the next level of education. Using two independent data sources, we focus on the attainment of an upper secondary degree and the transition from high school to university in Italy, investigating the role of parental education and social class in compensating for an early poor academic performance. Second, we develop a simulated scenario analysis to assess how much of the observed social background inequality is due to the educational outcomes of poorly performing students from high social backgrounds. The results are consistent with the notion that a CA mechanism is in place and show that the advantage of individuals with higher backgrounds over those from lower backgrounds is much larger among students with bad marks in earlier school stages. We estimate that at least one-third of the observed social background inequality in educational transitions in Italy can be attributed to the CA mechanism. This result is consistent across different outcomes, samples and birth cohorts, and is robust to a number of sensitivity checks.

En este artículo exploramos el impacto del rendimiento escolar (conocidocomo efectos primarios) y la estructura de costes y beneficios a los quese enfrentan los individuos de distinta clase social de origen (efectossecundarios) cuando afrontan la transición entre la educación obligatoriay no obligatoria en España. Ambos predictores de las trayectorias operana través de un efecto de interacción contribuyendo a la reproducción dedesigualdades educativas. Esta interacción parece sugerir que elrendimiento escolar no es interpretado de la misma forma por losindividuos de distinto origen social. En concreto, existe un efecto decompensación por el que los estudiantes de clase alta tienen unaprobabilidad mayor de alcanzar estudios secundarios superiores ouniversitarios con respecto a los estudiantes de clase baja, cuando sus«notas» son malas. Por lo tanto, la desigualdad por clase social de origenes máxima entre los peores estudiantes.

A youth’s ability to adapt during educational transitions has long-term, positive impacts on their academic achievement and mental health. Although supportive relationships with parents, peers, and teachers are protective factors associated with successful educational transitions, little is known about the reciprocal link between the quality of these interpersonal relationships and school well-being, with even less known about how these two constructs affect academic achievement. This longitudinal study examined how the quality of interpersonal relationships and school well-being worked together to affect academic achievement during the transition from primary school to lower secondary school. Data were collected from 848 Finnish adolescents (54% girls, mean age at the outset 12.3 years) over the course of sixth and seventh grade. The results support a transactional model illustrating the reciprocal associations between the quality of interpersonal relationships and school well-being during the transition to lower secondary school. As such, the presence of high quality interpersonal relationships promoted higher academic achievement through increased school well-being, whereas high school well-being promoted higher subsequent academic achievement through increased quality of interpersonal relationships. Overall, the results suggest that promoting learning outcomes and helping adolescents with challenges during educational transitions is a critical part of supporting school well-being and the formation of high-quality interpersonal relationships.

This article analyses the evolution of inequality in educational opportunities over the 20 th century in Spain, incorporating more information regarding students' personal and family characteristics than in other studies. This approach allows us to control for possible selection bias in educational transition models, in which many students are left out of analyses as transitions are made to higher levels of education, leading to results that cannot be extrapolated to the general population. A survey from Spain's Centre for Sociological Research (CIS) is used along with logistical regression models. Controlling for this bias, it is found that inequalities in educational opportunities have remained constant, although inequality in finishing obligatory education among agricultural classes decreased from the middle of the century, possibly the result of the universalisation of obligatory education.

The experiences and participation of all individuals involved in educational transitions are key to fully understanding the factors that facilitate or hinder these processes. Furthermore, these experiences can serve as a driving force for the continuous improvement of transition processes and related aspects at both the school and community levels. The aim of this research is to understand and transform educational transition processes using a participatory action research method. The study was conducted in a primary and secondary school in Gipuzkoa over three academic years, involving all children participating in educational transitions, as well as their families and teachers. Data were collected through questionnaires for families, semi-structured interviews with teachers, and participatory techniques to engage the children. The findings from the second research cycle revealed that the design of an action plan to improve transitions created new structures for teacher coordination and led to changes in school culture, emphasising the importance of listening to children and their families when designing improvement actions.

Little is known about the role of agency in transitions in tracked education systems or whether it varies by socioeconomic background. This study addressed this gap by estimating structural equation models based on longitudinal data that are representative of the German- and French-speaking parts of Switzerland (N = 1273 individuals, surveyed from age 6 to 18, mean age at wave 1: Mage = 6.54, SDage = 0.50, female = 49%). The findings reveal that agency (captured by study effort and occupational aspirations) and socioeconomic background (measured by parental education and family income) significantly predicted students’ transitions to academically demanding tracks in lower- and upper-secondary education. In the transition to upper-secondary education, students with fewer socioeconomic resources benefitted less than their more advantaged peers from ambitious aspirations, but they benefitted more from exerting effort. These findings suggest that both an optimistic forward-looking orientation and the exertion of effort are required to make it to an academic track. Effort may serve as a “substitutive” resource for less socioeconomically advantaged students, whereas ambitious aspirations may enhance the positive effect of family socioeconomic resources on academic educational trajectories. Overall, the evidence from this study calls for greater attention to investigating not only how agency shapes adolescents’ educational trajectories and opportunities but also how its role differs across social groups.

To clarify, in a national sample, associations between risk for seven psychiatric and substance use disorders and five key transitions in Sweden's public educational system. Swedish-born individuals (1972-1995, = 1 997 910) were followed through 12-31-2018, at mean age 34.9. We predicted, from these educational transitions, risk for major depression (MD), obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), bipolar disorder (BD), schizophrenia (SZ), anorexia nervosa (AN), alcohol use disorder (AUD), and drug use disorder (DUD), assessed from Swedish national registers, by Cox regression, censoring individuals with onsets ⩽17. We also predicted risk from the deviation of grades from family-genetic expectations (deviation 1) and from changes in grades from ages 16 to 19 (deviation 2). We observed four major risk patterns across transitions in our disorders: (i) MD and BD, (ii) OCD and SZ, (iii) AUD and DUD, and (iv) AN. Failing early educational transitions had the greatest impact on risk for OCD and SZ while for other disorders, not progressing from basic to upper high school had the largest effect. Completing vocational college-prep upper high school was strongly associated with risk for AUD and DUD, had little relation with MD, OCD, BD, and SZ risk, and was protective for AN. Deviation 1 predicted risk most strongly for SZ, AN, and MD. Deviation 2 predicted risk most strongly for SZ, AUD, and DUD. The pattern of educational transitions and within family and within person development deviations are strongly and relatively specifically associated with future risk for seven psychiatric and substance-use disorders.

U.S. studies have found that stratified graduate education accounts for most of the relatively strong intergenerational socioeconomic association among postgraduate degree holders. The same association has been observed, but not explained, in countries with higher education systems that differ from that of the United States. We explore the mediation role of undergraduate- and graduate-level stratification in accounting for the intergenerational occupational association among postgraduate degree holders in the United Kingdom. We find that the unequal distribution of undergraduate-level education and path dependency between undergraduate- and graduate-level stratification help to give rise to an unequal occupational outcome by social origin among postgraduate degree holders. We explain this by the tight coupling of undergraduate and graduate education in the United Kingdom. Our analysis also illustrates the need to go beyond graduate education in understanding social origin inequality among postgraduate degree holders to examine the role of undergraduate education and how it is linked to graduate education.

Whereas much research on interest development focuses on single, predefined, and generic objects of interest (e.g., science) in specific contexts (e.g., science classroom), this study proposes a person-objects-contexts (i.e., P-O-Cs) perspective that accounts for idiosyncrasy and multiplicity of interests and contexts and consequent intrapersonal dynamics. It reports a multiple case study in which four students were followed for over 2 years in transition from secondary to higher education. Data collection included seven waves of experience sampling of daily life interest experiences with the help of a newly developed smartphone application (inTin) and four biographical interviews per student. Analysis concentrates on the intrapersonal dynamics in interest development when pursuing multiple interests in multiple contexts, with study choice as a specific example. Results reveal how students’ multiple and diverging interests differ in across-context continuity, some being shared across school, family, and peer contexts. Academic and nonacademic interests are found not to be fixed and independent in their development, rather showing patterns of differentiation and integration in the interests over time. Moreover, students display parallel, sequential, and combined pursuance of interests in study and leisure time. We conclude how interest development is nonlinear and more fluid than typically theorized.

Lucas proposes a general explanation for social background-related inequality. Educational attainment research indicates that the later an education transition, the lower the social background effect.