Post-school Pathways Research Articles

Remote secondary education retention: What helps First Nations students stay until, and complete, year 12

Over recent years there has been a strong emphasis on year 12 completion as an indicator of success in remote First Nations education. The research reported in this article explores what students, school staff and community members say leads to secondary school retention and, ultimately, completion. The research was conducted in the Northern Territory and Western Australia during 2023 by a team of researchers from Batchelor Institute of Indigenous Tertiary Education, Curtin University and University of Notre Dame. The research focused on remote and very remote independent and Catholic schools. The findings suggest several factors encourage retention, including the supportive role of families (although questions remain on how families might also be supported to encourage their children), the quality of teachers and their teaching, specific school programs and initiatives, post-school pathways, and boarding schools. Student aspirations and motivation are also critical for retention. The findings have implications for schools, school systems, state and federal policies, and associated funding priorities.

Initiating, enacting and sustaining partnerships to inform post-school pathways

ABSTRACT Partnerships with local public sector agencies, enterprises and tertiary institutions offer a means to inform young people about post-school pathways into working life and occupations that schools alone cannot achieve. Informing about those pathways is an important, yet, complex educational goal for schooling. This is because much of schooling effort privileges and is directed towards higher education entry. Often advice provided to young people through schools is by teachers and administrators who are, understandably, unacquainted with the range of post-school pathways other than higher education. School guidance officers report being ill-equipped and unable to provide students personalised advice. Consequently, sources of advice and experiences beyond the school are now being utilised, particularly through the growing role of partnerships. These partnerships take diverse forms and comprise different kinds of institutional alignments and are increasingly being viewed as essential bases for supporting effective and informed post-school transitions. This article presents and discusses a review of literature and a recent investigation to advance principles and practices of how such partnerships can be best initiated, enacted, and sustained over time and they can meet the goals of informing and guiding young people’s pathways, including options other than progression to higher education.

Pressure to attend university: beyond narrow conceptions of pathways to a “good life”

ABSTRACT Securing stable, well-paid employment has become increasingly difficult for youth world-wide, negatively affecting their health and wellbeing. In recent years, this job insecurity has been exacerbated by compounding natural, economic, and social disasters. At the same time, young people are increasingly being encouraged to pursue higher education to secure a more viable future. This paper examines the post-school transitions of 22 Australian school leavers who were interviewed while at school between 2012 and 2017 and then again 1–5 years post-school. We investigated their transition into work and/or further education in the light of (1) profound societal change, and (2) the dominant narrative of university as necessary for the “good life.” We found that young people face immense pressure to attend university, even if their career aspirations do not require a degree, while other post-school pathways are derided. This pressure can compound stress and mental ill-health and is exacerbated by the limited career education available to students during schooling. In the context of immense transformation in contemporary society, we argue that conceptions of “worthy” post-school pathways must be broadened and communicated to young people through high-quality career education as they navigate their post-school transitions.

Whole-of-Rural-Community Approach to Supporting Education and Career Pathway Choice

Rural communities and partnerships are critical in career education, promoting pathways into work and further education and training. Families, teachers, and employers all may influence young people and adults who are considering pathway choices. This research aimed to equip these ‘key influencers’ with the knowledge and confidence to have supportive pathway conversations with rural young people and adults. The focus was not on those needing help with education/career choices, but rather those who influence their decisions. We used a Community Based Participatory Research (CBPR) approach in three communities to address the question: How can a whole of community approach best equip key influencers to inform and support rural student post school pathways? Community working parties were established to work alongside researchers to select, trial and evaluate of whole community, place-based, coordinated career education interventions, which targeted communities’ individual geographic, demographic and employment context. Communities were resourced with a local pathway broker and small budget for interventions. Individual interventions and the overall project approach were evaluated. Findings suggest that rural community-researcher partnerships can be effective in equipping key influencers with confidence and knowledge to inform and support education/career pathway choices. Community partnerships can take account of community assets and allow for interventions that address community contexts. Partnerships should foster community ownership to deliver education/career pathway information interventions that are flexible, accessible, sustainable, place-based, and authentic. This paper sets out a model for partnerships that effectively equips key influencers in rural communities to support education/career pathway choices.

Educationally maintained inequality? The role of risk factors and resilience at 9, 13 and 17 in disabled young people’s post-school pathways at 20

ABSTRACT While Ireland has the highest level of participation in higher education (HE) in Europe, it also has one of the widest participation gaps between disabled and non-disabled young people. Using a large-scale longitudinal dataset, we assess how disabled young people compare with non-disabled peers in accessing a range of post-school educational pathways. Extending the effectively maintained inequality perspective to disability research, our results highlight important qualitative differences in disabled people’s trajectories. Ultimately, we find greater progression to Further Education and Training, and lower participation in Level 8 degrees in universities, all else being equal. Entry to HE is lower among those with socio-emotional difficulties, even after controlling for key characteristics, while attendance among young people with an intellectual disability or specific learning difficulty is mediated by academic performance. The results highlight the importance of school attendance, engagement and achievement during the primary and early secondary years, and parental expectations, raising important implications for inclusive education. The multiple challenges facing disabled young people in Ireland are evident, reflecting the direct and indirect impact of socio-economic disadvantage, at family, school and community levels. Stronger linkages across the tertiary landscape and stronger HE transition supports, particularly for young adults with socio-emotional/psychological difficulties, are needed.

Vocational education teachers: perspectives on the standing of their educational sector and how it might be improved

ABSTRACT Young people’s decision-making about postschool pathways are influenced and shaped by parents, teachers, and other familiars. Yet, these familiars are often uninformed about vocational education as it has not been part of their personal experience. Instead, they may reflect and further embed the relatively low standing of that option. The lack of access to informed advice potentially leads to privileging university entrance, and post-school pathways not aligned with young people’s capacities and interests. This raises questions about whether advice, from those familiar with this educational sector and occupations it serves (e.g. vocational educators), would offer different and more helpful advice than familiars. Reported here are perspectives of and advice provided by over 300 vocational educators about educational/training course that may suit young people’s needs, preferences, and ways of engaging and informing them about post-school pathways, and how to enhance vocational education’s standing as a potentially viable post-school pathway.

Shaping young people’s decisions about post-school pathways: societal sentiments versus informed perspectives

ABSTRACT Both government reports and academic literature concur in claiming that the low standing of vocational education and training (VET) and the occupations it serves in the community is a major problem for increasing the engagement in this educational sector in an era of high aspiration. An initial analysis from a project capturing school students, school teachers and parents’ perspectives of what informs young people’s post-school choices found parents and teachers were key. Yet they often lacked informed and impartial exposure to or advice about VET and the occupations it serves. To identify whether this lack of familiarity was a key basis for shaping decision-making away from VET, a further analysis was undertaken drawing on the perspectives of vocational educators. That analysis showed, however, that exposure to VET and the occupations it serves does not, of itself, mean that the person providing advice is any more informed about or inherently encouraging of young people to engage in VET. Instead, vocational educators’ perspectives were more aligned with those of school teachers and parents of school-aged children than those of school students. The key finding here is that rather than relying upon the contributions that arise to engagement with familiars (i.e. parents and teachers), a process approach is required to provide impartial and comprehensive advice about and experiences with diverse post-school pathways and occupations to young people and to have mechanisms that allow their capacities, interests, and aspirations to be engaged with this advice.

Enhancing the standing of vocational education and the occupations it serves: Australia

ABSTRACTIn Australia, the relatively low standing of vocational education and the occupations it serves is of growing concern. This standing is held to contribute to an increased number of young people preferring to engage in higher education and to look past vocational education as a potential post-school pathway. Consequently, there are skill shortages in some occupations, as young people who might be suited to them are now completing university degrees instead, including those with no clear alignment with occupations or employment outcomes. To redress this imbalance, it is necessary to identify factors shaping young people’s decision-making about post-school pathways and preferred occupations. The findings of a project investigating these factors and how they might be addressed are presented and discussed here. Central are interactions with familiars, including parents, teachers and peers. However, the degree by which interactions are informed, engaged and influential differed. Teachers may need to be impartial and students’ deliberations about post-school pathways more widely informed. Strategies to achieve these outcomes were evaluated by informants, leading to suggestions for policy initiatives. These included government’s role in championing vocational education and how schools might more effectively inform and support students’ decision-making about post-school pathways.

The Transition from School in Bhutan

In Bhutan half of the population is under the age of 25 (United Nations 2017) and strengthening the pathways of all young people, regardless of their background, is one of the priorities in the Bhutan Education Blueprint 2014-2024. This study examines the transitions from school of a sample of 895 young school completers from Western Bhutan in 2013. It considers the impact of gender, socio-economic status (SES), school type and subject stream on their destinations. The study revealed that males, public school students and higher SES students were more likely to enter university and government vocational training institutes, while girls, private school completers and lower SES students were more likely to enter private vocational training institutions, repeat Year 12, work or enter the labour market. The study provides invaluable findings about the post-school choices of young Bhutanese and their post-school pathways, as well as providing suggestions for policy reform and further research designed to improve the transitions of young people in Bhutan.

Post-school transitions in Ireland: a case study of Russian-speaking students

ABSTRACTThis article examines the post-school pathways of Russian-speaking students in Ireland after completing secondary education; the importance of personal and institutional factors in shaping their transition process, and the role of parents and schools in achieving the post-school goals. The article draws on the qualitative exploratory study of 14 Russian-speaking migrant-origin students, to see how this group progresses beyond secondary schooling in the Irish education system. The study found that all participants had high educational aspirations. Most students achieved their desired first-choice post-school pathway, despite coming from a different linguistic and cultural background. The article points to a range of factors, which affect the post-school transition of migrant young people. The findings are discussed in light of Ireland’s liberal welfare state model with neo-liberal tendencies where those in positions of power can buy into the advantages of the more neo-liberal side of the regime.

Staying, leaving and returning: Rurality and the development of reflexivity and motility

Studies of rural areas have necessarily been occupied by discussions of migration, the experience of which is often concentrated among young adults in the years immediately following the end of secondary education. This dynamic has been attributed to a mobility imperative that equates leaving rural areas for the opportunities offered by urban centres with success, and staying in rural areas with failure. This article interrogates the distinction between those who leave rural areas and those who stay, drawing on life-course research that contextualises the post-secondary mobility imperative within individuals’ wider biographies in order to challenge claims that mobility is associated with the development of personal resources that lie outside the reach of those who are not mobile. The article presents data taken from a 20-year longitudinal panel study of individuals’ post-school pathways, drawing specifically on interviews conducted with participants who grew up in rural areas. By focusing on the significance of relational considerations, the authors contend that the mobility decision-making process results in the development of reflexivity about one’s mobility irrespective of its outcome.

The Voices of Parents

The expectations of parents can shape the post-school pathways of young people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD). Yet little is known about how parents view the employment prospects and priorities of their sons and daughters after high school. We examined expectations, preferences, and concerns of 1,065 parents of children and youth with IDD (below age 22) related to outcomes after leaving high school. We found parents prioritized paid community employment over sheltered options, valued qualitative aspects of the workplace (e.g., personal fit and interaction opportunities) over common employment outcome metrics (e.g., pay and hours), and held substantial concerns about their child’s future employment success. We found that multiple factors shaped parental expectations and the extent to which their daughters or sons accessed early career development experiences. We offer recommendations for research and practice aimed at raising expectations for and access to community employment for young people with IDD.

Participation in school sport and post-school pathways: evidence from ireland

We examine the impact of participation in sport at secondary school on post-school pathways using a survey of Irish school-leavers, distinguishing between those who dropped out of sport during their secondary school years and those who continued playing in their final school years. We find that members of this latter group are, on completion of secondary schooling, significantly and substantially more likely to continue their education rather than to join the labour market. This effect survives controlling for individual background traits, school characteristics, attachment to the school and academic achievement. Our results are also robust to the use of propensity score matching to control for selection into participation in sport based on observable characteristics. We relate our findings to previous work on the potential labour market benefits of participation in sport and to the emerging literature on the role of consumption value in educational choice.

University deferrers in metropolitan and non-metropolitan Victoria: A longitudinal study

This article investigates the phenomenon of university deferral and its impact on regional youth in Australia. It seeks to compare and contrast the post-school pathways and experiences of metropolitan and non-metropolitan deferrers over a period of three years following completion of school, with a view to establishing the unique characteristics of the barriers faced by non-metropolitan deferrers in Australia. Our research indicates that regional school completers are twice as likely to defer as school completers from the city. Three years out from school, a little over two-thirds of the regional deferrers in our study ended up at university. However, this still means that about one-third never took up their offer or dropped out soon after doing so. Financial stresses and travel-related factors seem to be the biggest barriers to taking up their place at university, particularly in the first year out of school.

Building long-term community partnerships in sensitive remote environments

Local communities can challenge the successful development of onshore oil and gas operations; for this reason, it is important to develop meaningful relationships with communities, where possible. As oil and gas companies establish more onshore operations it is necessary to find ways to build and sustain effective community relations. Rio Tinto-Alcan (RTA) Weipa and Energy Resources Australia (ERA) are two significant resources operations in Australia that operate in sensitive remote environments. Positive, enduring and collaborative community relations are essential for the success of both operations. A partnership between each company and the schools within their respective local operating environment has created positive student outcomes and increased workforce stability, resulting in overall success for education and industry in the region. This paper describes the long-term community partnership strategy that has been implemented to achieve mutually beneficial arrangements. It identifies how this experience can be used as a model to guide the oil and gas industry to establish sustained community relationships with its onshore operations, including CSG activities, in the future. RTA and ERA have worked with Nous to create partnerships between the operations and their respective local schools. RTA and Western Cape College have partnered since 2005, and ERA has partnered with West Arnhem College since 2009. The starting point was identification of the school education and workforce needs of each partner, then aligning them through a partnership based around achieving mutual goals. Nous found RTA and ERA’s needs were to: attract and retain staff;recruit local staff;improve Indigenous education and employment; and,support communities for a bright future and healthy young people. The schools needed to ensure: graduates have life choices and the capability to make decisions themselves;post-school pathways exist for students;students have diversified learning opportunities (both in the classroom and on the job); and,strong Indigenous communities are maintained, supported by leaders and young people. Quality local school education is important to achieve these goals. The partnerships have established a broad program of activities to encourage young people to complete their schooling and forge pathways post-school. The development and maintenance of collaborative arrangements requires planning, action, leadership, coordination, and sustained commitment to achieve successful outcomes. This paper describes the approach, program initiatives and outcomes achieved, and how the approach can be adapted for onshore oil and gas operations.

What can be Learned from the Roller Coaster Journeys of Young People Making Ultimately Successful Transitions beyond School?

This project investigated the interrelationships between family expectations and young people's post-school plans. All of the participants were from financially disadvantaged families. The research used interviews to understand these young people's perspectives of their transition experiences: the ways in which young people's school experiences impacted on their post-school pathways; how the young people weighed up costs and benefits in their decision-making; and exploration of the barriers and enablers encountered by the young people in their transition journeys. The findings endorsed the significant role played by families in young people's career decision-making and revealed some areas where such families might be provided with greater support.

Learning about the world of work: Co-opting school students’ paid work experiences

This paper proposes co-opting high school students’ paid part-time work experiences to develop their critical understanding of the world of work, beyond their schooling through post-school pathways. It argues that unlike work experience program or work placements organised through schools, students’ paid part-time employment provides authentic workplace experiences that have the potential to inform students deeply and critically about the world of work. These experiences include the reciprocal obligations that arise from paid employment and, as such, provide a rich base for high school students to explore the world of work, relationships in the workplace, what constitutes more and less valued work and how work is organised and rewarded. The co-opting of students’ work experiences for school-based activities may provide a useful base to explore the world of work both for those students who are employed part-time and those not employed in part-time work, but able to learn from their peers’ experiences. To assist achieving these goals some pedagogic tools are required to effectively describe, analyse and illuminate these experiences in classroom settings. A way of describing and critically appraising this paid work is proposed through individual and collective consideration of the activities and interactions that constitute students’ paid work experience. Given the difficulty of organising workplace placements and work experience programs, and the potentially richer outcomes, co-opting students’ paid work experiences presents a viable and worthwhile resource available in most classrooms for learning more about the world of work.

Rural young people’s work/study priorities and aspirations: The influence of family social capital

The transition from school to secure work has become more difficult as young people bear the brunt of the restructuring of the Australian labour market. Young people raised in a rural community are over-represented in the most disadvantaged labour market group- those who have not participated in post-school training and who have experienced long periods of unemployment. Rural labour markets feature lower paid, less secure jobs than their urban counterparts. Education is a proven way of accessing the ‘better’ jobs offered by national labour markets. Why then do young people from disadvantaged rural areas not take up education and training opportunities to the same extent as their urban counterparts? The research discussed in this paper investigated ways in which family and school/community social capital influence young people’s work/study values and priorities with regard to post-school pathways. Family networks and information that are limited and concentrated in rural areas tend to be associated with a desire to find a job before completing school, preferably located near to home. Incomplete understanding and lack of trust of educational institutions and labour markets in urban centres based on local experience may be transmitted through advice of family and friends and influence young people toward current work rather than the longer term goal of post-compulsory education. The implications for regional and national programs of educational and community development are discussed.

Pathways in Post-Compulsory Education—From Metaphor to Practice

Recent official reports have advocated that schools reformulate their curricula in terms of the future pathways of their graduates, and redefine their assessment criteria in terms of the competencies demanded by the restructuring of the Australian economy. ‘Pathways’ is interpreted by some as a ‘human capital’ metaphor for measuring educational outcomes in terms of economic purpose. The metaphor also seems to assume that genuine pathways already exist or can be readily constructed. This article reports on extensive consultation with five schools in three states to test the implementation of pathways goals within school programs. These schools initiated changes for 1993 to provide structures that link in-school and post-school pathways for their students. They apply a pathways focus to curriculum and school organisation, which provides a model for future school practice.