30 November 2012
Current government policy strongly advocates that young people finish Year 12, then move from school to further training and/or to paid employment. To combat high youth unemployment and poor outcomes for those with lower levels of education, the Australian government introduced the Learn or Earn program.
This study undertaken by the Australian Youth Affairs Coalition (AYAC) highlights the human impact and common experience of the Learn or Earn initiative and lets young people themselves tell their own experience of Learn or Earn.
The reasons young people disengage are varied and complex and show why engaging in education may be difficult or not the highest priority for young people not attending school at a particular time. In this study, the young people who struggled the most to engage in learning or earning were facing the most serious and significant barriers to engagement – often leaving both home and school to escape violence, leaving school as a result of bullying and harassment from other students, mental ill-health and social problems, chronically low self-confidence and a lack of family support.
Systemic issues within the conventional education system – a perception of schools as authoritarian systems, a lack of support when it comes to helping young people with their wellbeing and self esteem, a lack of support for their own learning needs, an unqualified bias towards academic success, and a lack of focus on the creative or vocational subjects that build the skills many young people really want and need – also act as barriers to engagement with learning.
Go to Beyond earn or learn
We discovered this report on the It’s work…honest blogsite - which describes itself as “your virtual watercooler, your virtual sofa (minus the crumbs), you know, the one that got taken away when they re-organised the office…”
