Across European countries, the expansion of education has increased during
the 20th century the opportunities of young people’s access to and within
schooling, but it has not reduced socioeconomic and cultural inequality both
in term of labour market’s entry and participation to the democratic public
life. This paper proposes an analysis of the ways in which education systems
are institutionalised in Europe and the effects of this institutionalisation on
educational inequality, young people’ labor market entry and the promotion
of their active citizenship: three hot topics in the EU agenda framing the implementation
of the European knowledge societies. Educational inequality
becomes particularly evident at the transition point from lower to upper secondary
education as this passage confronts young people with new (adult)
expectations, status and practices and contributes to their positioning in a
segmented labor market and an unequal society. Therefore, our special focus
is set on the kinds of transitions foreseen in the education systems of the
eight countries participating to an EU-funded research project on the Governance
of Educational Trajectories in Europe (GOETE). The aim is to highlight
how different the tasks of education are interpreted through the systemic
structure of the different national education systems.