MISSING MIDDLE: a comparative study of transitions among low achievers from academic upper secondary school
Supporting smooth transitions between levels in the educational system, and ultimately to the labour market is crucial in a societal and individual perspective. A group of students who have received little scholarly attention are those who achieve an academic qualification in upper secondary education, with comparably low grades (CLAA – Completers with Low Academic Achievement). There is little knowledge of where students head to after completion of upper secondary, whether they use their academic qualification to access higher education and/or to what extent they have successful careers. The project is a collaboration between NIFU and SPS, OsloMet, where NIFU is the project leader and owner.
CLAA have acquired generic skills and a certificate of upper secondary education which in principle grant access to higher education. However, if competition for higher education access increases, this group is likely to be left out, as they have poor grades and qualify for a more limited number of higher education programmes. What opportunities do these young people envisage in the labour market or in higher education? What are their future plans?
The project MISSING MIDDLE will investigate these questions using qualitative and quantitative data. The project is organised in four work packages: a qualitative part (WP1), two WPs using registry data (WP2 on students completing the general academic upper secondary programme, and WP4 on vocational students completing the one-year supplementary programme to get the academic qualification granting access to higher education, and one WP using survey data from an international survey which covers students in Norway, Spain, Belgium, Finland and Iceland (WP3). In 2025, the research group has been concentrated on publishing articles, in addition to giving a presentation for the Confederation of Norwegian Employers and Consumers (NHO) at Arendalsuka (in August 2025). Additionally, several members of the research group met the international researchers associated with the project from Iceland, Belgium and Spain at a conference.
In the period October 2024 to September 2025, four peer-reviewed articles have been published in the project. One of the articles is based on international survey data, published in Sociology and is about perceived social status. The other three articles are based on register data or a combination of policy analysis and register statistics. Hovdhaugen and Salvanes have published an article in Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research that examines whether those who have completed upper secondary with an academic degree choose to enter higher education directly or whether they take one or more gap years before starting. Furthermore, the article also examines what individuals do during their gap year, and consequences of gap years for completion of higher education. The article finds that gap years are common, more than half of all students who complete a higher education entrance qualification in a given year take at least one gap year before starting higher education. The most common is to use the gap year to work. Furthermore, the authors find that one gap year increases the chance of completing a bachelor's degree, while two gap years have a negative effect on the chance of completion for those starting an integrated master's degree. In an article in the Nordic Journal of Vocational Education and Training, the researchers show that the introduction of a supplementary programme for university admission directed at students who started a vocational programme constitutes an opportunity for these students to obtain university entrance qualifications without losing time. There were several different types of policy arguments for the introduction of the programme and as such it fulfils several different functions at the same time. In general, the study shows that the supplementary programme gives students from less-advantaged socio-economic background access to higher education. The last article is published in Norwegian in Nordisk Tidsskrift for Ungdomsforskning and is about vocational programme completion among children of immigrants. This study shows that vocational programmes do not lead directly to employment to the same extent for children of immigrants as they do for the majority population. This may in turn help explain why children of immigrants more often choose to complete vocational programmes with university entrance qualifications by taking the supplementary year.
Little is known of the career patterns of those who have completed an academic qualification in upper secondary education with low academic achievements (CLAA – Completers with Low Academic Achievements). Numerous studies have focused on either early school leavers or high achievers. This project targets the ‘missing middle’ in education research - neither prepared for, or necessarily admitted to higher education, nor holding an occupation-specific credential in labour market-demand. Thus, this is a group with rising risk of unemployment when competition for jobs increases and access to higher education hardens. We propose an empirically and theoretically bold study to produce knowledge on the aspirations, transitions and outcomes of students in the lower half of the achievement distribution in Norway. The study includes as a multi-method longitudinal comparative design linking comparative longitudinal survey data, qualitative data from four countries, and detailed Norwegian administrative registry data for several cohorts over time. This provides unique opportunities as to problematizing, renewing and develop dominant theories as well as the critique. The project is organized in four interrelated work packages, conducted by a collaborative and inter-disciplinary team of researchers at NIFU and Centre for the Study of Professions (SPS) at OsloMet. The international network of esteemed scholars from Belgium, Finland, Iceland and Spain provides insights contributing to produce high-impact knowledge to the academic community, users and policymakers.
