Megan O'Connell Consulting

The impact of COVID-19 on young people is immense, with a large effect on unemployment likely for years to come. Patterns of transition from study to work have been volatile since the global financial crisis, with many young people taking several years post education to find a permanent job. The economic impacts of COVID-19 will be felt by young people for years to come.

It is within this context the Shergold Pathways Review has landed. This review commenced as an important review of senior secondary pathways, including how they distort student choice and fail to recognise and build the skills young people need for their future.

The change in environment means this report takes on a greater importance – many young people will need assistance to identify new pathways open to them, that could enable them to build skills and navigate to roles that support their ambitions.

For some young people, this process may take many years and not be linear– their first job may not be their preferred role but a way of collecting experience and navigating to a range of fulfilling careers over a lifetime.

The review acknowledges the challenging and fluid environment facing young people and attempts to move from viewing ATAR as the paramount measure of school success to identifying a range of skills young people need to succeed.

“Senior secondary students should understand that, in planning for their futures, there are no wrong doors and – so long as they have the capacity to keep on learning – plenty of opportunities to change direction” Looking to the Future: Report of the Review of senior secondary pathways into work, further education and training

So what did the review conclude, and what is the path forward?

Core skills for the future

The Shergold Review helpfully spells out what, it thinks, are the essential skills young people will need when they leave secondary school.

These skills range from:

• foundational skills – literacy, numeracy and digital literacy
• capabilities – such as critical thinking and ethical understanding already in the foundation -10 curriculum
• career education
• other learning areas driven by student interests

The breadth of skills included are to be applauded – by including non-academic or subject based skills, like career education and capabilities, alongside core knowledge the review has confirmed what has been implicitly understood for a long while. Academic smarts alone are not sufficient for young people to thrive. Capabilities are crucial for young people to succeed beyond school and in the workplace – by not recognising them because they are more difficult to measure, we are doing young people a disservice.

The report advocates that applied and vocational learning be treated equally. It proposes that consideration be given to recognising learning gained in a variety of settings, from micro-credentials to community experiences. It doesn’t do this lightly, noting the immense amount of work needed to accredit and warrant different types of learning.

The devil of course remains in the detail. How do we shift the education system to focus on these areas? What support will be needed to ensure children of all backgrounds can progress? How will achievement be measured and what weight does each area get? In measuring what counts, we need to be careful not to create a new ‘tick-a-box’ system?

Help with navigating their future

This is the crux of the report, and the part we need to get right.

The recommendation for the introduction of a learner profile is the key. If we think senior secondary is about more than a number, we need to capture the fullness of what students have learned and acquired within and beyond the classroom. As we explored in Beyond ATAR, this is no small ask but it is achievable.

The extension of this is also proposed, a lifelong Education Passport, is aimed at ensuring there is a mechanism for accumulating learning and enabling individuals to navigate between different careers.

Supporting young people to manage their pathways is also prioritised through a range of mechanisms, including supporting partnerships with industry, and a well functioning career guidance system within and outside of schools and available throughout life.

This is vital – the Productivity Commission has shown how young people struggle to transition from entry level roles to  higher level roles. Most young people will seek to move between roles and industries throughout their life– this requires knowledge of their own skills and capabilities and a way to map to a variety of roles, some of which have not yet emerged.

Career guidance is variable at present, and often focused around choice of subjects in senior secondary rather than helping children from young identify what they like and what they are good at, moving into building a sense of work and testing what types of work they may like to pursue as they progress through secondary education. Work readiness skills are important for all learners – it is great to see this recognised. It would be fantastic to see young people experience a full trajectory of work experience – from learning about the world of work and exercising work related skills in the curriculum, to workplace visits and experiences.

More work is needed to support students to understand a breadth of pathways, and to ensure that vocational learning is not seen as a fallback option. The report cites asymmetrical access to information about pathways as a problem, most young people understand university pathways – far less understand apprenticeships.

How to make this tremendous cultural change to view vocational pathways on a par with academic pathways remains an enigma, although the evidence cited that VET jobs excite young people more than the training itself may hold part of the solution. Given the current economic crisis, vocational learning may place young people in a stronger labour market position than a generic university degree. Some jobs, for example jobs in the caring sector, are continuing to grow as well as being recognised as critical.

What comes next?

Much work is needed to bring these ambitions to life. There will be detractors in moving from the current, known system, to a new model.

Technical work will be needed, for example to understand and measure capabilities.

We also need to support cultural change – to bring schools and communities with us and drive confidence and belief in wider measures of success.

We need to think carefully about how to resource changes, to ensure their is greater equity in a new approach than the present system.

The potential is immense – the build a lifelong learning system that can support all people to develop, recognise and continually build their skills and capabilities throughout their lives.

A challenge will be to keep attention on this issue. There are no quick fixes here. It is more imperative than ever that we devote resource and effort to refocus senior secondary education on what matters, and help all young people to navigate their challenging futures.