Understanding career education for young people after school

Making the ‘right’ career choice depends on the information and support a young person has available to them, not only while at school but critically once they leave school.

At a glance

As careers education support is delivered across different systems and programs, access can be uneven and depend on where a young person is connected.

Dive deeper

We undertook research to understand where young people access career education once they leave school and its effectiveness. We interviewed 40 sector stakeholders and 77 young people aged 17 to 24 completed an online survey about their experiences of career education once they left school.

We found that:

• fragmentation of post-school career education causes inconsistent access
• post-school career education is compensating for gaps in school-based career education
• employment services system constraints shape access to career education
• Person-centred and strengths-based approaches are critical to building young people’s career management skills.

To strengthen young people’s access to career education once they leave school, the federal government should recognise the role career education plays in helping people achieve their employment, education and training goals – and invest in career education. To do so, the federal government should:

• develop and implement a national lifelong career education strategy. A national career education strategy would provide consistency in access to and quality of career education across the life course. This would address the current fragmented and reactive system that responds to workforce shortages and labour market changes as they emerge. By better coordinating current career education related investment, all people will have equal opportunity to build career management skills, participate in work and achieve their career goals
• embed career education in the employment services system. To support the implementation and intended outcomes of the employment service system reforms, access to timely and meaningful career education needs to be included as a core component.