‘How do we ensure that the digital economy doesn't leave people behind?’ To answer this question posed by Mathew Taylor and Payal Dalal (2019) of Britain's Royal Society of Arts requires much deeper consideration than has been the case for societal transformations of this kind in the past. As we shall see, ‘The Internet of Everything’ produces change at an accelerating rate in every domain of human activity, of which the most problematic, in terms of meeting youth transition needs, is education. At the most basic level, as the previous chapter showed, prior to the influx of digitalisation, schooling supplied, at least in principle, the knowledge and skills needed to lay the foundations for later participation in vocational training, the labour market and citizenship.

With the dramatic changes in the organisation of the labour market from the 1970s onwards – now confronted by the challenges of digitalisation and ever-accelerating technological change – transformation reaches another level of complexity. The far-reaching educational consequences have been evident for some time, but until the 2007/08 banking crisis, and the recession that followed, most of these effects on young people's prospects were barely recognised (Schoon and Bynner, 2019). The crisis economy, marked by 12 years of post-2008 banking collapse and austerity, was characterised by lack of stability and insecurity. Short-term and zero-hour contracts, ‘casual’ jobs and unemployment replaced secure positions across whole swathes of the labour market. The consequence in Britain was a massive rise in social and economic inequality and the beginnings of the case not only for lifelong income support but universal lifelong learning (Bynner, 2017). In Germany there was a faster recovery and a race to higherlevel education, adding to educational inequality.

Against this background, this chapter addresses the role of education in supplying added value in the digital society of which Germany and the UK are now a part. What should be the content of the curriculum for young people pursuing the various routes to adult life in the changed circumstances of a rapidly transforming society and uncertain international relations arising from Brexit? What are the capabilities and transformational mechanisms essential for full participation that the education system has to transmit to the younger generation in the digital society?