In many countries there is a debate concerning the risk to see the chances of downward mobility prevail on those of upward mobility (Bukodi & Goldthorpe, 2018). The UK’s decline in opportunity has been described as a squeeze at the bottom: while privileged elite university graduates continue their path on a golden route populated with perks and higher pay, non-graduated who once followed an alternative route into good jobs, are now pulled away the rungs of the social ladder and trapped in precarious gig jobs (Major, 2020). Employment, in facts, has grown more at the top and bottom end of the skill distribution and less in the middle, where technologies have replaced many middle-skill roles. Similar trends are observed in the US, where opportunity gap has dramatically grown between kids from have and have–not backgrounds (Putnam, 2015) and where in the economic stagnation areas the college educated become healthier and wealthier and adults without a degree are literally dying from pain and despair (Case & Deaton, 2020). Far from acting as an equalizer, education has contributed to tear apart the fabric of our societies and to bring new anxieties and anger (Collier, 2018). Like in an arms race, well-off families today push harder to ensure their offspring have a path to security and success (Zilibotti & Doepke, 2019) and biggest losers are the school leavers with no qualifications or skills at all (Major, 2018). COVID-19 has exacerbated the existing inequalities (Jæger & Blaabæk, 2020) and the need of radical policies to create a more inclusive and better functioning economy has become more pressing.

In the receipt for a fairer and more inclusive society, many authors point out the necessity to rethink education (Major, 2018, 2020; Sandel, 2020; Collier, 2018; Putnam, 2015). The mantra college for all has ended up labelling young people with other talents – creative, vocational and technical – as failures, with a consequent wastage of talents in particular among people from disadvantaged background. Switzerland, whose vocational courses are typically three to four years long, where firms pay half of and where VET is very popular among young people because they receive an attractive pathway into employment, help to develop the skills required in the labour market, relevant work experience and get paid, is often cited as an example to imitate (Collier, 2018).

This contribute aims to describe the transition from compulsory to the post-compulsory school or vocational tracks and the completion of the post-compulsory education of seven cohorts of youngsters living in the Swiss canton of Ticino and to compare the pathways of different social groups.

Ticino constitutes an interesting case because it is a region characterized by a relatively comprehensive school system, where tracking is postponed to the 8th grade and limited to two subjects in a country where most of the cantons adopt a selective school system. The strong work-based vocational training system is however similar to the rest of the country and has guaranteed until today a relatively smooth school-to-work transition.

The school pathways of seven cohorts of students (ca. 21,000 youngsters, living in the canton of Ticino) were analysed in order to illustrate the educational tracks followed after completing lower secondary school (from school year 2008/09 to 2014/15) and highlighting typical features, delays and reorientation needs in the following 5 years (8, for the 4 older cohorts). School pathways were put into relation to variables such as social origin and nationality. Data used belong to the Ticino’s Department of Education, Culture and Sport, who has developed an application that makes available - in the form of database - student-specific information, including some social and biographical details, data on the student’s past and current training, subjects studied, grades and end of the year results.

The analysis shows that in each cohort after compulsory education, about 40% of youngsters have commenced a high school, an analogous percentage a VET and around 6% a transitional solution aimed at supporting the entry into the VET. Students from socially underprivileged families have a lower propensity of continuing with a general education and a higher probability of attending a VET. By contrast, students from upper class are more inclined to continue with general education probably because of the higher familiarity with this kind of track and their parents’ aversion towards downward social mobility (Glauser & Becker, 2016). 5 years later over 30% of students belonging to the socially most deprived group of each cohort have completed the VET while only 13% are in possession of a high school diploma. At the age of almost 21, around 60% of them have completed the VET while less than 20% are in possession of a high school diploma. These percentages equal 40% and 43% respectively among the upper class students. Both in the lowest and in the highest social group 13% are NEETs or people who are untraceable. If VET promotes social inclusion of the most vulnerable youngsters and improves their chances to integrate as skilled workers in the labour market, the biggest concern are people who could not enter or could not complete the VET. Moreover long-run returns to VET could be uncertain: in a context of rapid technological change, specific skills can get soon obsolete and the biggest challenge in a country like Switzerland is to maintain the attractiveness of VET and its role for upward mobility is to adapt to the changing world of work.The risk on inequality at a further stage of working trajectory depending on the type of upper secondary education should be then taken into account.

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