Access, Coping and Relevance of Education at Local Level: A Case Study. A life course approach to the analysis of young people’s educational trajectories.

The present paper introduces the objectives and the design of the project “Governance of Educational Trajectories in Europe” (GOETE) and it presents some findings emerging from a case study conducted in one of the cities involved in the project, Bologna. GOETE project analyzed how educational trajectories of children and young people between the end of primary education and the beginning of post-compulsory routes are regulated in eight different EU-member states: Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Poland, Slovenia and the UK. The research assesses the outcomes of education, taking into account the effects of social inequalities, changes in the governance of education in terms of lifelong learning, knowledge societies and transnational educational spaces. “Life course” perspective provides an interactive understanding of educational processes and addresses the interplay between the institutionalization of individual lives and subjective biographies.