This book draws on a wealth of international sources and studies in its analysis of the ‘transitions’ young students make as they move on from their secondary schooling. It identifies how these transitions are planned for by policymakers, enacted by school staff and engaged with by students themselves. With data from a range of nations with advanced industrial economies, the book delineates how the policies relating to these transitions need to be conceived and implemented, how the transitions themselves are negotiated by young people, and how they might be shaped to meet the varied needs of the students they are designed to help. The authors argue that the relationship, often complex, between what schools provide in the way of preparation, and the ways in which students take up what is on offer, is the crucial nexus for understanding the experience of transitions by young people, and for enhancing that experience.