Making Their Way: Education, Training and the Labour Market in Canada and Great Britain

David Robinson is a professor of Economics at Laurentian University.

From school to work is one of life’s major transitions. This book
explores an institutional boundary that is vital to the nation and
crucial for individuals. By comparing the passage from school to work in
Britain and in Canada, the book throws light on both societies and
provides a foundation for improved social policy.

The trend in Canada is toward a longer, more gradual transition. Four
or five months of part-time work each year while in school was the mean
for a sample from Edmonton. Alternating between school and work is
common and seems to be more and more a part of students’ life plans.
The Canadian pattern seems to work better than the British on average;
Canadian students are fairly successfully integrated into the labor
market.

This is a well-structured and well-edited volume. Although based on a
conference in 1988, it avoids the usual problems of conference volumes.
For example, parallel papers by Harvey Krahn and Malcolm Maguire on the
labor markets in Canada and Britain take up common themes in roughly the
same order. Three articles on the social role of the schools share a
concern about the way students perceive the system and make effective
use of quotations from interviews with students. They present a fine
example of how sociological analysis can combine qualitative and
quantitative methods with political and historical detail to get at the
heart of a social issue.

Longitudinal studies for Canada and Britain—reported by Krahn and
Lowe and by John Bynner, respectively—are interesting in their own
right and link the general economic analysis with the institutional and
personal histories. A brief article by Walter Heinz examines the
comparative approach and adds a continental perspective.

Essays by Ashton and Lowe bracket the collection. They are weakened by
the authors’ modesty. The essays in this collection might have
benefited from a systematic cross-national research design, as the
editors point out, but anyone seriously interested in understanding
schooling as a part of the larger system will benefit from reading this
book.