Pathways to higher education have multiplied in many European countries and traditional boundaries between general education and vocational pathways have become increasingly blurred. In Germany, the expansion of vocationally oriented schools has resulted in an increasing rate of offspring from non-academically trained parents gaining a higher education entrance qualification (HEEQ). In France, the vocational baccalaureate was implemented to achieve the political goal to provide a HEEQ for 80% of a youth generation. In several Eastern European Countries too, vocational schools today provide access routes to higher education. Whereas vocationally oriented pathways have enriched the access routes to higher studies, it remains contested whether they decrease or reproduce social inequalities among young people in accessing HE. Non-traditional pathways to HEEQ may divert pupils from higher education (Shavit & Müller 2006), and the social background of learners in post-communistic countries has a growing impact on their results, aspirations, and consequently their chances of continuing in studies upon completion of secondary education (Simonová & Soukup, 2009). Watermann and Maaz (2006) in turn have pointed to opportunities for upward mobility for young people from lower classes via vocational oriented schools in Germany. 

This symposium advances previous research by opening the black box of vocationally oriented schools in asking of not only whether, but how vocationally oriented schools in Germany, France, and the Czech Republic allow for the formation of study intentions of students from non-academic backgrounds and for the reduction or compensation of social inequalities in the access to higher education entrance qualifications. It consists of four paper presentations and a concluding comment.

Paper 1 will examine whether, and if so why, different pathways to higher education have an effect on the development of the intention to study and its motivational factors of pupils from different social backgrounds in Germany. Paper 2 analyses the ways vocational learners in different French training models project themselves into further study. Paper 3 investigates how vocationally oriented schools in Germany enable pupils from different social backgrounds to achieve a HEEQ with a special focus on organizational structures and pedagogical practices that support study orientation/preparation. Based on biographical interviews with students, paper 4 analysis how the biographies of unsuccessful graduates from vocational secondary schools interact with the practices of those schools in the Czech Republic and how their interplay leads to failure at the HEEQ exam. 

The four contributions bring together different theoretical perspectives from psychology, educational science, and the sociology of education which allow for understanding vocationally oriented schools as potential stepping-stones towards higher education for first generation students. Whereas the theory of planned behaviour (Ajzen 1991; Fishbein & Ajzen 1975) allows for modelling the intention to study structured by motivational factors in contexts of a more or less college-going culture, Bernhard's (2018) concept of institutional permeability helps distinguishing organisational school contexts where study intentions are co-produced by the learners and pedagogical staff. The complementary life course approach (Bertaux & Kohli, 2009) and convention theory (Boltanski & Thévenot 2006) highlight social and moral structures in which young learners with their agency are positioned and exposed to the reproduction of social inequalities.

The symposium provides unique insights in vocationally oriented schools and how their learners perceive their opportunities to progress towards higher education. The international contributions will be commented from a Bulgarian perspective, a country marked by pronounced social inequalities in education, where almost half of a youth generation enroll in vocational education with many of them transitioning further to higher education.

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