There are two reports that are worth a look at on this issue. The first is by Dina Bowman and Ursula Harrison and looks at the insights gained through the Brotherhood of St Lawrence’s ‘Insights from the Life Chances Study’ running from 1990 to 2024. It followed 167 infants born in two inner-Melbourne suburbs who were recruited through local Maternal and Child Health Services. It focused on 4 life phases: the early years, the school years, transitions from school and work and family life.
The second is from the Smith Family and entitled ‘Pathways, Engagement and Transitions: Dynamic post-school pathways of young people experiencing disadvantage.’ This too is a longitudinal study but running over a much shorter period: three years, 2021 to 2023. It hears directly from two cohorts of financially disadvantaged young people who were in Year 10 or Year 12 in late 2020 and on The Smith Family’s long-term educational scholarship program, Learning for Life. It drew on information from three surveys and annual interviews with 60 students who completed the surveys. It aimed to understand the post-school pathways of young people experiencing disadvantage by examining their level of engagement in work and/or further study and the factors influencing their pathways. The report also suggests what more could be done to strengthen young people’s post-school outcomes.
What the Brotherhood’s report found
The report is a very rich one, but our focus here is on education and its effects. First, it’s about gender: women and girls are now entering a wider range of occupations. “Nevertheless, for some girls and young women, gendered cultural expectations dashed early aspirations.”
Second, it’s about attainments, opportunities and quality advice. What’s needed is:
“appropriate learning opportunities for young people with low academic achievement and learning difficulties; education, training and employment services that are ‘youth friendly’ and incorporate a holistic approach to wellbeing.”
This also involves sound education and career guidance being provided to assist young people to make informed choices about their education and training along with “the provision of employment services and support to help young people into jobs that match their skills, interests and aspirations.”
Third:
“The competitive nature of education and the increased emphasis on formal qualifications disadvantaged some young people, especially those who were not academically inclined or did not have the social and cultural capital to help them navigate an increasingly complex system.”
Fourth, the path to secure employment can be long and rocky. The report found that juggling work and study can be hard, and there can be a sense that extended education did not guarantee a good job. Indeed, some find themselves ‘doing circles’ in the education system in the hope of finding a way out – an exit lane – from a cycle of insecure work, uncertain what would pay off or whether they would be penalised for lack of work experience in an increasingly competitive job market.
Finally, one of the key messages is that education is important with its potential to increase opportunities and enable social mobility. It’s recognised as such, but it costs. And these costs are hard to bear for those suffering disadvantage.
What will help?
As readers might suspect from the text above, one thing that can be done is providing “appropriate learning opportunities for young people with low academic achievement and learning difficulties; education, training and employment services that are ‘youth friendly’ and incorporate a holistic approach to wellbeing.” Another is “providing education and career guidance to assist young people to make informed choices about their education and training.”
What the Smith Family’s report tells us
The Smith Family work compliments what the other study found. It highlights that a number of factors interact to influence the post-school transitions and improve the engagement of young people experiencing disadvantage. The first is having career management skills. These are “essential to making strong and informed transitions into post-school work or study. This includes their personal management skills, learning and work exploration skills and career building skills.”
In addition, career related part-time employment, course placements, paid cadetships or internships can provide many young people “with opportunities to explore their chosen pathways and further investigate the extent to which these pathways matched their interests, skills, and abilities.”
Finally, academic support systems and programs provide some young people with the means of engaging and succeeding in their studies and may also provide post-school opportunities to explore apprenticeships and higher education opportunities for some young people to increase their engagement in work or study.
According to the report, barriers to successful transitions include precarious and limited employment opportunities, financial constraints, health and mental health issues as well as some young people having “significant informal caring responsibilities that affected the extent to which they could fully engage in work or study.”
Strengthening post-school transitions of young people experiencing disadvantage
According to the report things that will strengthen successful transitions include providing individualised support, early intervention for those struggling with the academic and social demands of school, ensuring “a focus on intentional career development learning for young people of all ages and stages,” providing “young people with accessible information on diverse career pathways” and by enhancing efforts, both while they are at school and post-school, “to encourage their increased participation in Vocational Education and Training and apprenticeships.”
Finally, additional measures could include increasing “young people’s access to timely and affordable health and mental health services,” funding “an expansion of high-quality career-related, remunerated work placements, cadetships and internship programs, which target young people experiencing disadvantage” as well as supporting “family members’ access to up-to-date labour market, education and training information, and with how they can help young people to develop and achieve post-school goals” and finally by investigating “ways to formally increase the social capital and career-related adult networks of young people experiencing disadvantage, including through employers.”
