Future Proofing Australia's Young People

On average, we have between five and seven careers, and 19 jobs in our lifetime. With our technology and working environments moving at unprecedented speed, we need to revisit the career advisory system and rethink the way we prepare young people for the new world of work.

Our ageing career advice faces growing challenges in the modern landscape. It relies heavily on our educators who are time poor, under supported, and often lack career experience outside the education sector. Students are given a heavy responsibility to proactively seek advice and work experience, with the guidance on offer often falling short of what is needed, while being provided too late and yet, concluding too soon. Parents’ expectations can be unrealistic, while their influence is shown to be the greatest in the career planning process.

At its core, our current system is based on the concept of a single and specific career path. This idea is quickly fading with the emergence of artificial intelligence, digitalisation, big data, machine learning and automation. In a world of exponential change, we cannot apply yesterday’s thinking to today’s employment landscape.

As our future workforce is staring at an uncertain future in the face of a global crisis, to adequately prepare them is our job as citizens and it requires new levels of collaboration between students, parents, schools and industry. We need to work together to advocate for new ways of supporting the education-to- workforce transition. This might include contemporary concepts of industry-led engagement, on-demand and future-focused learning, lifelong learning, career development (as opposed to career planning), human-centric skills, the role of the “elders of our society”, skills passports, learning journals, and the formation of self.

This white paper starts a meaningful and constructive discussion that is pegged to grow. It considers some of the current challenges alongside the growing opportunity to rebuild meaningful and impactful systems whereby we, as a society, can more effectively support young people and create a better workforce for the future.

The full discussion paper can be downloaded here.