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Over the past decade the world of work has become more granular, more disparate, full of new opportunities and the disappearance of old, traditional pathways. The idea of a job for life is no longer entertained and many well-trodden careers and jobs have become redundant. The charge of AI and new technologies has been relentless and the lack of certainty about future employment has posed serious questions for our schools and the role of the careers advisor. In part, this is due to a lack of synergy between the workplace that requires new skills and knowledge, and schools still fixated on the end goal of maximising a bundle of grades. Even if we dismiss the report that came out in 2018 that 85% of the jobs that will exist in 2030 hadn’t been invented – and we should – the rapidly changing job market still begs the question as to what advice and guidance we should be giving students. Careers advisors are constantly upskilling and learning the job market and in-service training is more far-reaching than ever. The purpose of the role, which is to advise students on their tertiary and vocational choices is essentially unchanged, but as the pace of change in our work patterns and roles continues to accelerate, causing a disjoint between education and employment, then we – they – have a problem.
The counter from schools has been, not surprisingly, that they are already teaching what is required and that while curriculum content may change, the essential skills involved in education, – critical reading, communication, problem-solving, creativity and collaboration – are future proofed, even in the fields of data and technology. And that may be so, although there is more to be done by way of response to the ever-changing marketplace.
A lot has happened since that 2018 report, particularly in the emergence of exponential technologies, and the rise of the remote workface and gig economy. Since covid, which was a time of reflection for many, there has been a movement away from seeing university as the be all and end all of education. The time of schools steering their more able students towards a Russell Group university is no longer a done deal; indeed, students have been looking anew at the benefit of a university education, the correlation between a degree and employment opportunities, grade inflation and mounting debt. When they read that there was a 90 per cent increase in the share of UK job postings not requiring a degree between 2021 and 2022, and, IBM, announcing that fewer than one in five of job postings requires applicants to have a university qualification, they will deduce that the traditional pathways are no longer sacrosanct Students, with or without guidance, are talking to each other, considering a growing range of tertiary options, including study overseas, nano degrees and specialist colleges or deciding to enter the workforce to learn on the job.

So what has to change to get better synergy between schools and the job market? Clearly, a curriculum more closely aligned to the needs of society, more project-based and challenge-based to open up new pathways and to find new ways to assess students without corralling them into academic pens. We need to listen to call from Joseph Aoun et al to add technology literacy, data literacy and humanity literacy to the traditional literacies – all of which takes time which schools don’t always have, with AI and chat-box already knocking down the doors. However, schools can isolate key skills and take on board some of what employers are saying about collaborative learning, team building and how we measure ability, especially that of SEN children. It is embedding such change throughout the curriculum that is the challenge.

Careers advisors, especially at academic-leaning schools where the requirement for vocational advice has been largely limited to the traditional universities, are finding the changes most pronounced. The limitations of career evenings, visits to universities, job fairs, tapping into alumni and national and local role models are still valuable although in some instances, they help perpetuate a stereotype. More than ever before, they have to be aware of new and innovative courses, not only in the UK, but worldwide. They have to know what is out there, options such as nano degrees, internships, apprenticeships, educational Gap Years and new providers, such as ALC, Udacity and Hex. They cannot do this on their own and can be compromised if their schools are not teaching the competencies and skills to make students capable of meeting a myriad of challenges. They need to recognise where job vacancies are and the burgeoning opportunities in programming, software development and cyber security and ensure students are not being lured into university courses where there are few job opportunities after graduation. They need to know the pathways and the networks available while also learning more about the student’s skillset and attributes, their EQ as well as their IQ.
But there is something else I would hope they would do. When Aoun mentioned the three new literacies, of the three it is human literacy that focuses on well-being and self-awareness and how we can use our humanity for sustainable and progressive life-long learning, that is so vital. We are much better at this than even a decade ago and schools are striving to put this at the heart of their teaching. But we are not there, and won’t be until schools and careers advisors are encouraged to couch the advice they give in a wider societal context. This is not to doubt that their advice is always measured and considered, but sometimes it is given from a school or parental standpoint. A few decades ago, when asked what they would like to be when they grew up, the majority of children plumped for nursing, teaching, the police and fire brigade or some other service job. We need to encourage students to look at what truly interests them, rather than following their grades and allow them to give voice to their social inclinations, even whether they want to do well or do good, not in a missionary sense, but by choosing a pathway that is ethical and contributes to the well-being of their community and society. Both words may be old-fashioned in some quarters, especially when choosing careers, but many of our young are not happy following the time-worn paths to the definition of success blindly followed in the past; rather, many want to make a difference by choosing a life and a career that contributes to the well-being of society and the sustainability of the planet. Asking the question, ‘what do you want from your working life?’ might seem more philosophical than vocational, but it’s one that should always be asked.