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In most advanced countries, young people are now expected to remain in education until the age of 18 and, in a context of poor opportunities for those who leave at an early stage, there are concerns about those who are being left behind. In this paper we use comparable survey data to focus on the destinations of young people in two contrasting societies, England and Wales and Japan. We compare the destinations of 19/20-year-olds in the two countries, with a strong focus on those who leave education at an early stage, and go on to explore the extent to which young people's socio-economic backgrounds and their orientations to education explain their post-school experiences. We argue that, in both societies, those who enter the labour market before the age of 20 face severe difficulties irrespective of their social background. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]