New opportunities or reinforced disadvantages? Variations in returns to low-achieving school leavers' participation in pre-vocational training programmes - Extension: Dropping out of VET programs (N.O.R.D. 2)

School leavers with low levels of education are at risk of never completing vocational training because they face difficulties in entering vocational education in the first place, and because they are more likely to drop out of vocational education once they have entered it. To address these problems, Germany has introduced prevocational programs (short: pre-voc programs) encompassing classroom training, career guidance, and internships. These remedial programs are meant to prepare the participants for an apprenticeship.

While in our project NORD 1, we investigated access to apprenticeships, NORD 2 focuses on those who drop out of apprenticeships, asking the following questions:

1) Why are low-achieving school leavers more likely to drop out of apprenticeship programs than intermediate-educated school leavers?

2) Does participation in pre-voc programs impact on low-achieving youth’s risks of dropping out of apprenticeship programs and if so, for whom and why?

3) What happens after dropping out of apprenticeships? Who manages to enter another apprenticeship or university and who drops out of education?

We use data from the German National Educational Panel Study (NEPS) on a cohort of students who attended grade nine at German secondary schools in fall 2010. The students have been surveyed once or twice each year since then.