Michael Mutz, Ulrike Burrmann

• School can be regarded as a context for a variety of leisure activities. Especially in all-day schools an increasing amount of young adolescents is spending more time in extracurricular activities. Therefore, all-day schools hold the potential to produce an "educational surplus" because it is argued that these activities contribute to the psychosocial development of adolescents. However, prior to the quest for possible developmental outcomes which could be related to extracurricular activities, another fundamental question must be responded to: Which groups of these young people do actually participate in such after-school programs? While analysing the socio-economic structure of participants for different school-organised activities, the article follows this query. For reasons of comparability, two other leisure contexts are examined: Clubs and volunteer associations as organised contexts on the one hand and a variety of informal and unstructured leisure activities on the other hand. The results reveal that extracurricular activitiesSchool can be regarded as a context for a variety of leisure activities. Especially in all-day schools an increasing amount of young adolescents is spending more time in extracurricular activities. Therefore, all-day schools hold the potential to produce an "educational surplus" because it is argued that these activities contribute to the psychosocial development of adolescents. However, prior to the quest for possible developmental outcomes which could be related to extracurricular activities, another fundamental question must be responded to: Which groups of these young people do actually participate in such after-school programs? While analysing the socio-economic structure of participants for different school-organised activities, the article follows this query. For reasons of comparability, two other leisure contexts are examined: Clubs and volunteer associations as organised contexts on the one hand and a variety of informal and unstructured leisure activities on the other hand. The results reveal that extracurricular activities in schools succeed in including socially disadvantaged adolescents. The study is based on a secondary analysis of the German PISA 2000 data set.…