Age-appropriate careers education starting from the primary years has powerful outcomes for student engagement and wellbeing.
Data shows that young people are actively thinking about their lives and careers long before formal career guidance traditionally occurs within education. However, less than 10% of students below Year 10 say that a teacher or adult at school knows about their ideas for their future.
Humans are naturally wired to imagine the future. A positive vision of 'how my life could be' is a powerful source of motivation. Age-appropriate career related learning helps students to envisage potential futures that inspire and motivate them. It is inextricably linked to improving student learning engagement and wellbeing outcomes.
It's important to highlight that there is a difference between career related learning/Career Education and Career Guidance.
Career Guidance is often focused on transition and decisions, whereas career related learning does not narrow younger students down to decisions about a career but instead works to open them up to possibilities -- to encourage the widest possible curiosity-led exploration of work and career ideas.
The world of work is not something younger students should be protected from as though it were a bad thing, but something they should explore look forward to being a valuable part of (as they naturally do from a very young age). The BECOME program supports schools to provide the time, tools and resources for students to explore and design their future in a safe space.
But shouldn't we let kids be kids?
Around the world over the last 10 years, policy has been emerging in response to the clear evidence base in favour of starting careers education earlier.
A common response is that this robs children of their childhood. We disagree. Thinking about your future supported by quality career-related learning should be a positive, inspiring and hopeful experience and every part of the BECOME program is designed to make it that way.
Below are a couple of research papers and resources from others:
Dream Jobs? Teenagers' Career Aspirations and the Future of Work
OECD Career Readiness Project, Presented at the World Economic Forum 2020
'Some of the most important career decisions we don't make at the end of schooling when we talk about those things but actually in the first years of schooling, in primary school. This is the time when we figure out whether school is a meaningful experience, the time and energy we dedicate to learning, the fields of study where we place our effort. All of that profoundly shapes the opportunities that we're going to have later in life.'
View the findings of the OECD Career Readiness project here: www.oecd.org/education/dream-jobs-teenagers-career-aspirations-and-the-future-of-work.htm
What Works? Career Related Learning In Primary School
By Dr. Elnaz Kashefpakdel, Jordan Rehill (Education and Employers) and Dr. Deirdre Hughes OBE
'Practitioners are often fearful of making children ‘grow up too fast’ at such a young age. Yet, many education and career development theorists highlight the formative years of childhood as integral to the overall understanding of the self (‘who am I?’) and opportunity awareness (‘what does the world of work look like?’). It appears that children begin to understand the world, and their roles within it, from a younger age than previously thought. As a result, children may limit their educational and occupational choices at a time when their views are too narrow and experiences too limited to make a sound judgement'.
Download the full research paper here (PDF): www.educationandemployers.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/1145_what_works_primary_v7_digital-1.pdf