Danish production schools carry out a specialised task in the educational system. They offer education for youth having dropped out of formal education or are considered in risk of dropping out, and by providing a wide range of practical workshops (Pless, 2009; Rasmussen & Rasmussen, 2009) and integrating production in their educational programmes, they are said to represent a ‘third way of education’ (Hoppe & Gremaud, 1999). Since 2005 the schools are required to assign only youth, assessed, identified, and classified within the specific target group by the municipality’s youth counsellor, and in 2010 this group was further specified to youth that demonstrate specific needs for developing their personal skills and “readiness for education” (Folketingstidende, 2010). In this paper, considering the target groups in the school programmes, we address this ‘new’ term of readiness for education. What is understood by this term in relation to the task of production schools? How can educational transition be meaningfully understood in relation to the target group of youth attending production schools? The question about readiness for education will be researched through a curriculum analysis of the policies of this school type and the changes they have undergone since their beginning 50 years ago. Production schools have no formal curricula as such, but all the same, it is important to identify how they have intended various forms of ‘knowledge and knowing’ with a significant mix of epistemic, social, and subjective dimensions, which can lead to a greater understanding of their curricular structuration (Muller, 2009) and how they intend to improve the ‘readiness’ of the targeted youth and make them “knowledgeable” with self-confidence (Larsen, 2014). In a historical perspective their programmes can be seen as trading spaces (Werner & Zimmermann, 2006), where different practices of transition are formed and act as both contexts for and products of the structures of society and the educational systems at specific times.

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