This paper focuses on a policy proposal to provide education that fits the needs of the vulnerable group of students in the last years of secondary school who are not ready and not motivated to learn at work or at school. This group of students often had a ‘non-linear’ school career, hereby experiencing failure and grade repetition. They are often tired of school, regularly skip school and have a high risk of early school leaving. For a long time, the Flemish education system was able to accommodate this group in flexible VET-training programmes in the part-time education system, but the policies of the Flemish government recently introduced a new system of dual learning. That new system offers less flexibility and no other options for students who are not ready and not motivated to learn at work than simply to return to the full-time school system. This situation poses a high risk to increase early school leaving in Flanders. The Flemish Education Council is proposing an action plan to remedy the policy problem by providing a ‘growth trajectory’ for secondary school students of age 15 to 25 who are not ready and not motivated to learn at school or at work. In this paper we will present the Flemish policy problem and the solution we propose. The paper also focuses on an international comparison of policies to combat early school leaving from VET, which we used as input to come up with our policy proposal.