Is education preparing young people for work?

Wool exercise showing interconnectednessThe question about whether education is preparing young people adequately for the workforce is one that is being raised often in the education sector.

We have reviews being undertaken by Government about career curriculum, VET, School Based Apprenticeships at the same time some alarming statistics are coming out.

Jan Owen OAM was speaking at the recent Masterclass that FYA put on about how young people are waiting 4.7 years after finishing full time education (secondary or university) before gaining full time work. That is terrifying! It was one year ten years ago.

The same data set is also showing one in 5 young people are unemployed after finished University and a third of all young people are under-employed.

We need to change how we educate young people – not to guide them into ‘a’ job, but to prepare them and arm them for multiple different jobs across many different industries or sectors. That is the world they are entering, not the one the majority of educators did. We saw first hand (photo above) just how interrelated the skills across different jobs are.  As Jan also said, we are in the fourth industrial revolution and education’s time is right now!

We have decided to walk the walk and listen to the research. We are now incorporating the transferable skill language throughout our job descriptions and in future advertising. We want young people to be able to relate to what we are asking them to do in employment, and know they can do it. We won’t ask for chronological resumes that list experience, we will ask for skills and attributes that we want here at BGKLLEN.

We get so much out of our relationship with FYA. Thank you Jan and team for helping us work smarter.