Why We Need To Disrupt Careers Education
what do you want to be
when you grow up it’s a question i’m
sure most of us have been asked at some
point in our lives
usually when we were teenagers maybe
even younger
and for some of us the answer is almost
instinctive
but for most of us it takes a little bit
of time to figure it out
at the age of eight i wanted to be an
archaeologist
you might think that’s a bit of a
strange choice for an eight-year-old and
maybe i had a family member who was one
and that’s where i got the idea from but
i’d never met an archaeologist
in fact i only knew such a thing existed
because there was a tv show i was
obsessed with as a child
it was called time team each episode a
team of archaeologists would take on a
new project
and through their excavations they would
uncover the secrets of the past
i was intrigued and hooked and i thought
about being an archaeologist for a while
but i was 8 and i had no idea how to
become one
by 10 i had already moved on to a new tv
show
called csi i thought gil grissom was as
cool as you could get
and forensic science became my new
career interest
that year i even asked for and received
a microscope set for christmas
by 12 i was using computers in school
nothing that kids today would recognize
they were these big old style monitors
with big back boxes that took up a whole
desk
and we saved things to floppy disks
instead of to the cloud
i learned quickly played strategy games
became fast at typing
and even then i thought computers could
be the future and a job working with
them
would be a pretty safe bet but i didn’t
know any computer programmers
or software engineers and there were
some stereotypes at the time
that computer programmers were all men
or really good at math
and it just didn’t feel like something i
could be
ultimately i didn’t become an
archaeologist
or a forensic scientist or even a
software engineer
but what my story illustrates is how
young people’s ideas for the future
for what job they want to do when they
grow up and who they can be
is so heavily influenced by their
environment and by what they are exposed
to
my generation were the saturday morning
tv kids so it follows that the jobs i
knew about were the ones i discovered
through tv
today’s kids they’re the internet and
youtube generation
and it shows in 2019 the word influencer
was added to the dictionary
so my first message today young people’s
ideas for the future
are heavily influenced by their
environment and by what they believe
they have the potential to become
around five years ago i participated on
a local career program
as a mentor and was paired with 17 year
old thomas
thomas was a bundle of energy and
creativity
and he was so engaging and witty and had
so much potential
but at times he just couldn’t see it in
himself
he was completing a qualification in it
and at the time i offered him 12 weeks
of work experience
as well as a listening ear and a little
bit of guidance
when the program ended we decided to
keep in touch and around a year later we
got to chatting
and thomas just seemed so demotivated
and a little bit lost
at the time i was working on a project
to digitize
40 years worth of hr records it was as
bad as it sounds
and i knew i could use a little help so
i asked for some budget to bring thomas
back in
this time though things were very
different
thomas had dropped out of his i.t course
and his confidence had taken a hit
during our conversations he said he
thought he wanted to go to university
but he wasn’t too sure what he wanted to
study or even how to get there
at around the same time he had become
engaged with a local youth support
initiative and through it he realized
that what he really wanted to be
was a youth worker so together we came
up with a plan to get him back into
college to finish his it qualification
which would enable him to apply for a
degree in community youth work
i am so proud today to say that thomas
is almost finished the first year of
that program
so my second message today young people
can become overwhelmed by choice
and it’s easy for them to feel a little
bit stuck i’m sure that’s something we
can all relate with
and structured interventions can help to
get them back on track
you might be wondering why i’m sharing
my story and thomas’s story with you
today
it’s because we are currently facing a
significant and detrimental skills
challenge
and it’s only going to get worse a
massive 75 percent of businesses in
northern ireland say they aren’t
confident they can fill future skilled
rules
innovation and technology is constantly
changing the landscape of the world
we live and work in and that rate of
change is ever increasing
we throw around these phrases like
industry 4.0 and the fourth industrial
revolution
and it includes great things like smart
factories and automation robotics and
the internet of things
but when we talk about these things we
often forget one important aspect
people today some of the most in demand
jobs
didn’t exist ten or in some cases even
just five years ago
things like a social media manager a
podcast producer
an app developer even a blockchain
engineer
and there are so many more and we will
continue to see new jobs emerge in the
future
a popular estimate predicts that 65
percent of children entering primary
school today
will ultimately end up working on a job
that doesn’t even exist yet
65 percent
we are taking steps in the right
direction we know that today
we rarely have a job for life anymore
and instead we need to focus on
transferable skills
that are in demand by all employers
things like communication
problem solving creative thinking and
even resilience
we also know that it’s more beneficial
to offer young people choice
that better suits their learning styles
don’t get me wrong
i’m a graduate and university is great
but it’s not the only route to success
we now recognize that vocational
learning and practical experience are
equally important too
so we are getting there but there’s
still a lot of work to do
there’s one crucial piece of the puzzle
that i think is always left out
on its careers education careers
educators have been historically and
continue to be
underfunded and under-resourced the
world of work is changing so quickly
it’s impossible to keep up all sectors
have changed so much
yet careers education hasn’t
need an industry-led approach that
equips our young people
with up-to-date information on the most
in-demand skills
and as a result benefits industry with
reduced bottlenecks in the skills
pipeline
we need to be creative innovative and
collaborative in our approach to careers
education
to better inform our young people of the
wide range of career paths and jobs
available to them
and we need to extend that engagement to
careers teachers and parents
two of the most influential sources of
careers advice
we really need to identify a young
person’s attributes and talents
to be able to offer them opportunities
that are better matched to their talents
and passions
i don’t think it’s a coincidence that my
school reports often said that i was
very talkative and could easily distract
other students
who knew that years later i would be
using those skills today to give a ted
talk
we need to make a connection between the
subjects that young people study
and the careers they want to pursue and
we need to start doing it at a much
earlier age
my final message the future of work
looks so different than it does today
the rules of the game are changing
we need an innovative creative and
collaborative approach
to careers education so consider this
your call to action
the current skills crisis and the lack
of investment and support in careers
provision
affects all of us businesses educators
the wider economy parents but especially
our young people
the way careers education is delivered
needs to be disrupted
to allow our young people to fulfill
their potential and contribute to the
economy and society
we need to act now to enable our young
people to foresee their own futures
and to answer that one all-important
question
what do you want to be when you grow up
thank you