Since 2000 post compulsory education in Victoria, Australia has experienced a series of major policy initiatives instituted in a platform of reform which advocate joined up government and interagency collaboration as a means of solving the ‘problems’ of young people at risk’ by increasing participation in post compulsory education and training with a particular focus on transitions and pathways from secondary school to further education and work. A second line of reform has been the introduction of a new vocational curriculum of applied learning, which is aimed at addressing the increasing numbers of students who leave secondary school without completing any qualifications. This new curriculum advocates new ways of teaching and learning and is providing new challenges for schools and teachers alike. This paper focuses on two of theses initiatives – the implementation of a new vocational curriculum and the development new partnerships and networks, beyond the long established boundaries of schools themselves. The paper argues that the proliferation of policies aimed at presenting new ways of managing the education, training and transitions of young people ‘at risk', are deeply conservative and have focused on young people taking on new vocational identities. Further, the policies that focus on ‘at risk’ young people fail to address the complexity underpinning individual decisions about staying on or leaving school or what constitutes’ risk’. Recent research indicates that there is no clear ‘transition’ period or obvious ‘pathway’ that marks school from post school work or study, rather a multiplicity of options in which students negotiate school and work simultaneously.

The research data is drawn from a series of interviews and focus groups with teachers, students and network members, conducted for a three year case study in Geelong, Victoria. A qualitative methodological approach is used in the analysis.

The paper concludes that policy rhetoric does little to support teachers and schools to change their ways of working. Those most successful in taking on these new identities are not those policies appear to target; the ‘at risk’, the marginalised, the under performing teachers and schools in poor areas. Rather than systemic change having been achieved by the reform initiatives, changed activities at the school level remain limited. Most schools are focussed on maintaining the integrity of the system over the lifeworlds of individual students. New networks, partnerships and curricula remain premised on young people fitting the system, rather than the system responding to changing student identities of young people today.