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False start
Bold plans needed to help Australia ’ s young people through uncertainty .
Peter Kelly interviewed by Wade Zaglas
An education and wellbeing expert is
concerned that the future for young people will be as challenging , if not more so , than that experienced after the Global Financial Crisis .
For Professor Peter Kelly at RMIT ' s School of Education , this is a consequence of years of employment instability , poor work conditions and “ predatory business behaviours ” and , of course , the COVID-19 pandemic .
As Kelly says , young people are more vulnerable “ largely because of the sorts of work young people do ". This includes hospitality , retail and gig work .
But in his interview with Campus Review , Kelly mentioned that it ’ s not just the financial situation young people may find concerning : he described the current period as a sort of “ existential crisis ”, a time when many vulnerable young people are asking : “ What does life look like next ?
“ They are trying to map out the next stage of their lives ,” Kelly said , “ and are also seeking all those things that mark an adult life – independence , autonomy .”
Kelly has criticised governments and peak bodies for focusing too narrowly on skills and training , something the academic argues young people already have . Kelly is leading a project in Melbourne ’ s inner north called ‘ COVID-19 and Young People ’ s Wellbeing , Education , Training and Employment Pathways : Co-designing Scenarios for Young People ’ s Sustainable Futures ’.
The project seeks to look at what “ recovery ” looks like for vulnerable young people in the short , medium and longer term , and help them map out the next stages of their lives in broad , critical and sometimes provocative ways .
“ We ’ re particularly interested in those populations who are already vulnerable ,” he said , adding that “ they didn ’ t have to have a mental illness to be considered vulnerable ."
CR : You ' ve predicted some grim outcomes for young people due to the impact of COVID-19 . Can you talk a bit about that ? PK : It ' s sometimes really difficult to actually be optimistic about the futures for young people , whether that ' s short-term futures or more medium- and longer-term futures . What we ' re trying to do some research on at the moment is the sorts of projections that we can make into the future , given what we know about some more recent crises , for instance .
And we have some historical evidence from the global financial crisis of 2008 and 2009 , and the sort of life that followed for many young people as they tried to transition out of school and into work . And there ' s a recent Productivity Commission Report that looked at the significant income drops for that generation who turned 30 at the end of last year and the impact of the global financial crisis on their income and employment opportunities in that decade .
There ' s strong historical evidence that young people tend to carry a fairly significant burden in the downstream effects of these crisis , and at the moment we ' re in the middle of that , the health crisis dimension of the COVID pandemic .
Young people are less impacted in some respects than other parts of the population by the virus itself but in terms of the educational , the employment , the other economic and social consequences the crisis is really impacting young people in disproportionate ways , largely because of the sorts of work that young people do and the sorts of industries and industry sectors that they work in and the impacts of the shutdown on those sectors .
We are doing research at the moment to try and think about what those possible futures look like for young people in
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