Description: PISA data provides researchers with a rich 'snapshot' of students at age 15. While examinations of the PISA data provide a wealth of information on the current standing of the young people who participate, however, without longitudinal data we are unable to examine the relationships between these variables and subsequent attainment of a variety of milestones and markers in the lives of young people. In the latter part of the year, the Australian PISA 2003 sample became the newest cohort of the Longitudinal Surveys of Australian Youth (LSAY). They participated in an introductory survey and interview in that year, and were followed up again in 2004 and 2005. During these annual interviews, the 2003 PISA participants, or LSAY Y03 as they are now known, answered a range of questions on their current educational activities, their participation in the labour market, their pursuit of leisure activities, and their satisfaction with various aspects of their lives. The first purpose of this paper is to investigate the pathways followed by young people in the LSAY Y03 cohort in the years following their participation in the PISA tests. How many of them are still attending secondary school? What year levels are they in? How many have left secondary school? What are those who have left school doing? These data provide us with a unique opportunity to follow a PISA sample over a number of years and to answer the question as to whether we can predict young people's educational and labour market pathways after PISA from their performances on the PISA tests. Earlier LSAY research reported a strong relationship between achievement by Year 9 and participation in post-compulsory secondary education and in post-secondary education and training (e.g. Fullarton, Walker, Ainley and Hillman, 2003). This research has suggested that low achievers are more likely to leave school early, to enter apprenticeships or to attempt to enter the labour force immediately upon leaving school (McMillan and Marks, 2003). High achievers, on the other hand, are more likely to make use of opportunities for further education and training, particularly universities. Nevertheless, this relationship is not always so simple; not all Year 9 high achievers complete Year 12, and not all of those who complete Year 12 continue their education beyond secondary school. The LSAY data provide a unique opportunity to investigate the pathways that young people who scored highly on the PISA tests take in the later years of secondary school, and to relate these pathways to other possible explanatory variables, particularly sociodemographic background variables, gender and interests as measured in PISA. Analyses of possible relationships between the PISA test scores, student background characteristics (including interests and attitudes) and subsequent pathways will be conducted using chi-square analyses and multivariate logistic regression. A secondary focus of this paper is to explore how data from subsequent interviews with the Y03 cohort might be analysed and applied to educational policy. This section of the paper will present an overview of a recent research using the LSAY data to examine such issues as the characteristics and activities of young people who were not offered a place at university (Marks, 2005); participation in, persistence with and subsequent pathways from non-apprenticeship VET courses (McMillan, Rothman and Wernert, 2005); the activities and profiles of young people outside the labour force and full-time education (Hillman, 2005); and the consequences of Year 12 subject choice for further education and work (Thomson, 2005).