Does Work-Based Learning Facilitate the School to Work Transition? Evidence from an Italian Reform

In 2015, school-work alternation programmes (alternanza scuola lavoro) became compulsory in all Italian high schools, with the purpose of enabling students to combine theoretical learning at school with work-based learning. A distinctive feature of this reform was that the intensity of school-work-alternation programs varied across school tracks, higher for technical schools and lower for academic schools. Using a difference–in–differences approach, we show that female students in more intensively treated tracks experienced a decline in the probability of employment during the year following high school graduation, relative to females in less intensively treated tracks. The decline was accompanied by an increase in full-time higher education. These results could be driven by the relatively unattractive conditions offered by the Italian labour market to high school graduates without college education.