School dropout prevention continues to exercise the mind of policy makers in many countries. The European Ministers of Education (2003), for example, established several reform targets for education systems in Europe for the year 2010 including increased participation in the upper end of second level schooling and the reduction of non-completion rates. In the USA the Department of Education established within its confines the Institute for Educational Sciences (IES), one of whose units is known as "What Works Clearing House" (WWC). The role of WWC is to be a central and trusted source of scientific evidence for what works in education. It reviews extant research about programs, policies or practices and assesses the "quality" of the research. Based on the research that meets particular standards, the WWC then reports on what the research indicates about the effectiveness of the program, policy or practice, which can be abbreviated as "the intervention".

The WWC produces three types of reports and a guide:

• intervention reports which assess all studies of a specific intervention within a topic area, rating each of them on WWC evidence standards;
• topic reports which compile the information from intervention reports within a topic area and enable WWC users to easily compare the ratings of effectiveness and sizes of effects for numerous interventions in one area;
• quick reviews designed to provide education practitioners with timely and objective assessments of the quality of the research evidence for recently released research papers and reports, and
• practice guides that contain practical recommendations for educators to address challenges in their classrooms and schools.

School dropout prevention is one of the topic areas of the WWC. Evidence for following three outcomes is rated for effectiveness:

• Staying in school
• Progressing in school
• Completing school.

Educational and vocational guidance are to be found as part of many dropout prevention strategies but they are only one element of a multidimensional approach to proving solutions to school dropout.

The WWC section on school dropout prevention is essential viewing for all policy makers, researchers and practitioners concerned with this problem.

Recently published by le Haut Conseil de l'Education in France, this report highlights how the organisation of education programmes and of learning opportunities in second level schools (colleges, lyceés) in France has a negative impact on young people's choices and consequently on the provision of career guidance, and how it contributes to both social reproduction and social inequities. It sets out four priorities for future actions:

• The transfer of responsibilities for guidance provision to the regions
• The redefining of the role and function of guidance
• Giving teachers a proper guidance role
• Strengthening careers education to assist pupils to make choices.

This report comprises the first comprehensive review of guidance services in second level schools (students aged 12 to 18 years) since the establishment of such services in the 1960s in Ireland. It was carried out in four parts:

1. A survey of the existing use of resources (personnel, capital) allocated for guidance in all 738 second level schools in Ireland by the Department of Education and Science
2. An in-depth survey of 260 of those schools
3. Case studies of guidance provision in 15 of those schools
4. Individual and group interviews with stakeholders (school management, parents, students, guidance counsellors).

Wide variation of experiences of guidance provision, both across schools and within schools, was reported by the stakeholders. The value of certain guidance activities was confirmed but issues of access to and resources for guidance provision were strongly emphasised by all stakeholders.

This article is a summary of the first report of Future Track, a study of 130,000 higher education applicants in the UK in 2006. Commissioned by the Higher Education Careers Services Unit, the study will track these applicants for the next 6 years and on through their early careers, including unsuccessful HE applicants and also successful applicants who chose to pursue non-HE opportunities.

Some of the findings of the first report (the study is being undertaken by the Employment Studies Unit of the University of Warwick) are somewhat expected while others are not. Here is a selection:

Applicants from families where one parent had already participated in higher education had greater expectations of attending higher education than those from families who did not have such experience.

• 73% reported that they had not received enough or no information on the career implications of post-age 16 subject choice
• 60%had notreceived enough or no information on the relationship between HE courses and employment.
• 51% had not enough or no information on possible alternatives to higher education
• 57% had not enough or no information on the range of degrees on offer