In 2015, school-work alternation programmes were made compulsory in all Italian high schools, with the aim of enabling students to combine theoretical learning at school with more practical experience. A distinctive feature of this reform was that the intensity of school-workalternation varied across school tracks, being higher for professional and technical schools and lower for academic schools. In addition, the type of practical learning also varied, with students in technical and professional schools having more opportunities to learn in firms. Using a difference–in–differences approach, we show that students who participated in more hours of school-work alternation experienced a significant increase in the probability of employment during the three quarters following high school graduation.