VC’s corner
campusreview.com.au
Paradoxically, however, it is these same
disadvantaged students who are least likely
to be well informed about the post-school
opportunities that are available. Students
who live in rural and remote communities,
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people,
students with a disability, and those brought
up in poorer or less-educated families are
the least likely to find the information they
need to access the variety of employment,
training and educational opportunities that
are available to improve their human capital
(and, consequently, their life chances).
Education and training, in whatever
form, is the best way for disadvantaged
young people to overcome their deficits,
build their strengths and – in meeting
Australia’s future skill needs – help revitalise
the institutional foundations of equal
opportunity. Full integration into the labour
market offers young people steadier
employment, greater income, more family
stability and enhanced civic participation.
It’s the game-changer. The successful
transition from school to work is crucial to
ensuring that family disadvantage can be
overcome and that Australia can remain a
socially mobile and egalitarian nation. A ‘fair
go’ society depends in large measure upon
how well young people of all backgrounds
can access opportunities as they move
from school to work. At the moment,
information on these opportunities is
asymmetrically distributed. Those who
need it most receive it least.
UNCERTAINTY
It is a truism that the future of work is
uncertain. There are strong indicators
that we are entering the ‘Fourth Industrial
Revolution’, characterised by a fusion
of technologies that is blurring the
lines between the physical, digital and
biological spheres on a global level. Its
most obvious features are increased
robotic automation, speech recognition,
natural language processing, machine
learning and the beginning of artificial
intelligence. The collective impact of these
cognitive technologies is unclear. Some
commentators anticipate a dystopian
workless society: others, on the basis of
past historical experience, remain sanguine
that new jobs will be created to replace
those that are destroyed. There is more
general agreement that the skills required of
occupations are likely to change profoundly
and rapidly. And, unlike the earlier era
of mechanisation, it is professional and
administrative skills that are most likely to
be undermined.
How do we best prepare senior
secondary students for such uncertainty?
On the one hand, many argue that we
will need to provide more young people
with the science, technology, engineering
and mathematical skills to understand
and oversee an age of computerised
information mining, big data analytics and
pervasive digital communication. On the
other hand, others believe that the skills that
are likely to increase in value are those that
will continue to require human interaction:
an increasing number of jobs in education;
health; and child, aged and disability
care will need people trained to exercise
autonomy with emotional intelligence.
We can begin to imagine a future in which
the relationship between the robotic and
the human, between soft skills and hard
skills, becomes more fully integrated.
We will need both coders and carers.
There is one only certainty. In a world
in which employment structures are likely
to be transformed, we need to educate
students who can continue to learn
through their working lives. We need to
help students prepare not for the first five
years after they leave school but for the
next 50 years of working life. We need to
ensure that as young people transition to
employment they have learned how to
analyse, conceptualise and solve problems;
to be able to assess the provenance and
reliability of evidence; to communicate
clearly; to undertake tasks with little
direct supervision; and to work as part of
a workplace team that brings together a
diversity of skills and experience harnessed
to a particular task. The question is: How
do we best help young people to develop
these generic capabilities as they prepare
to transition from school? How do we give
them the confidence that they can cope
with a future that at present we can see
only through a glass, darkly?
WHOLENESS
Too often young people believe their
individual capacity is judged by a single
academic score at the end of Year 12.
The ATAR – or its equivalent – seems to
many students, parents and teachers to
define success, even to the extent that
students are sometimes encouraged
to lower their ambitions and undertake
lower-level subjects to maximise their
score. Adolescents often feel under intense
pressure. Yet the reality is that for most
students, an academic mark at age 18
is a pretty poor indicator of educational
capacity, let alone workplace potential.
We need to measure the complete
person. Of course, academic success
in the basic skills – reading, writing,
mathematics and (today) digital literacy
– remains important. But together they
represent just some of the indicators of
potential. Young people (and those who
judge them) need to understand that it
is the whole individual that is important.
Some of that person may be seen
inside the classroom, but much of their
character is only evident outside it. In
preparing for adulthood we need young
people who have learned to think for
themselves.
The part-time workforce experience
of students, their vocational skills, their
community engagements, their sporting
achievements, and their interpersonal
drive and capacity should all be taken into
account in assessing their readiness for
the workplace and civil society. Perhaps
we need to imagine a leaving certificate
that assesses the capacity of a student
more broadly and, in doing so, sends out
a strong message about the variety of
interests, commitment and energy that
will enhance career prospects.
These are bold ideas. They challenge the
institutional demarcations and hierarchies
that presently constrain young people’s
perceived opportunities. I think it’s about
time we became more willing to embrace
the potential of disruption. We need to
We need to educate
students who can continue to
learn through their working lives.
empower young people to make their
own decisions with eyes wide open – a
transition that they can control based
upon informed choice. Perhaps we need
to prepare senior secondary students not
for university or TAFE or an apprenticeship,
but for a single seamless tertiary sector
in which they can move flexibly between
different types of education, skills training
and employment, learning to learn their
way through life. ■
Peter Shergold is chancellor of Western
Sydney University.
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