Megan O'Connell Consulting

This year I’ve had the joy of working on two important pieces of work, in addition to my day job as an advocate for early childhood education and care. Both these projects dovetail together to paint a picture – many young people miss out on career education, and this makes their journey from school to their next destination more difficult. It also impacts their school engagement and achievement. A sense of a future career pathway supports engagement. Many young people struggle to fully engage at school if they can’t link the learning to their future prospects, or worse still if they have no sense of where to next. With a bewildering array of pathways available young people can easily get lost.

I’ve revisited research from 2019 with NSW Department of Education, where we learnt from school based pilot projects, and developed Models of Workplace Engagement to help schools to implement more effective ways to prepare young people for the future of work. This year the models have been tested in action.

My second project started as a research project on how young people find out about alternative pathways to university. I found that young people most confident about their transition know what they like and are good at, and can link this to careers and pathways.

There’s a number of key learnings from both projects:

• Some young people have a network of family, friends and workmates who they rely upon to support them to explore careers and pathways. However, many young people do not have these networks or have narrow networks that lock them into certain occupations or pathways. If young people cannot see different roles and industries in their networks they are unlikely to be able to aspire to them.
• Young people want access to career education from much earlier in their schooling, by Year 9 at the latest. Ideally career exposure would continue from early in schooling. In kinder and preschool parents are often invited in to talk about their jobs, but this usually stops once school begins.
• Career education and workplace learning need to be personal and multi-faceted, from learning about the world of work, to developing interview skills, understanding different careers and experiencing workplaces. Young people with a sense of their future career are more engaged in their studies – workplace engagement can turn young people’s disengagement around if they can see the relevance of school.
• There are a range of innovative models for workplace engagement, both these need to be shared, resourced and scaled. At present many careers educators operate in isolation, their projects not being seen as school priorities compared to academic outcomes. Our notion of success as a system doesn’t equate to what young people need to succeed.
• Young people value information from trusted advisors. They switch off in large, generic information sessions or when hearing from people they cannot relate to. They are seeking information from people like them, current university students or school alumni now in industry. They want to talk with and hear from people, not read website information.
• Some young people, particularly those who are disengaged or in vocational streams, are supported to engage in workplace learning to learn about and try different industries. They are much more comfortable in their transition from school.
• Young people and parents alike do not know about alternative pathways to success. The ATAR is seen as the pathway to success, even though many students and parents do not fully understand it, or it causes stress and anxiety. Young people are introduced to alternative pathways as a second chance option, or find out through peers.
• Parents need to see that success is achievable through a wide range of pathways. One way is to showcase former school students who have achieved success through a range of pathways, rather than just holding up the linear ATAR to university model as the only way.
• We can learn from COVID – virtual work experience can enable more students to learn about workplaces, experts can stream into classes remotely, and more parents can be engaged in career conversations through online meetings than the limited number that return to school for information sessions.

As the current senior students transition to their next destination, following several extraordinarily disrupted years, it is time for the Australian school system and government to seriously examine how to achieve the goals of education.

If we want all young people to leave school as confident and creative individuals, and successful lifelong learners, as well as active and informed members of their community, we must think about new measures of success.

Young people who know what they like and are good at, who have explored careers and have a sense of what they want to do, and who understand a variety of pathways are most confident in their transition from school. Surely this should be a benchmark of success?