Students who were in grade 9 in 2010 were interviewed since then on a regular basis within the National Educational Panel Study (NEPS). After the first funding period, the NEPS-consortium excluded former students of special schools from the main sample in December 2013. Therefore, there was a need for external funding to continue with the “special school sample”.

There is a lack of data on educational trajectories and transitions of former students who graduated from special schools. However, NEPS data allowed an analysis of transitions from general school systems to either a transition or a vocational training system (after grade nine or ten). Nevertheless, it is not known if those transitions succeed or fail.

This research project continued surveys of those students on a regular basis and contributed to the following research questions:

• How do they proceed through different educational stages (after grade nine or ten)?
• Who are the ones experiencing a smooth transition from school to the vocational training system?
• Who is dropping out and who is not making use of available options at all?
• Which factors have an impact on the school-training-transition?
• Do students from special schools differ regarding their development of competences?
• Which measures support the transition to the vocational training system, which do not?
• Is in-school-guidance perceived as more helpful compared to extracurricular guidance?
• And are there differences between these students and those with similar competences from different school types?

It was expected to get profound insights into educational trajectories of former students of special schools. The dataset can be used as a German-wide reference data set to contextualize process-based data collected by the Federal Employment Agency.