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Career confusion in the 21st century: challenges and opportunities

        [1] The time and energy that teenagers dedicate to learning and the fields of study they choose profoundly shape the opportunities they will have during their whole lives. Their dreams and aspirations do not just depend on their talents, but they can be highly influenced by their personal background as well as by the depth and extent of their knowledge about the world of work. ln summary, students cannot be what they cannot see.

        [2] With young people staying in education longe than ever and the labour market automating with unprecedented speed, students need help to make sense of the world of work. ln 2018, the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), the world's largest dataset on young people's educational experiences, collected first-of-its kind data on this, making it possible to explore how much the career dreams o young people have changed over the past 20 years, how closely they are related to actual labour demand, and how closely aspirations are shaped by social background and gender.

    [3] Studies in Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States show that teenagers who combine part-time employment with full-time education do better in their school-to-work transitions. The positive benefits include lower probabilities of being unemployed or NEET (Not in Education1 Employment or Training), higher waçes, and others (see Box 1). However, the benefits cannot be taken for granted and some experiences in different countries have demonstrated that governments and schools can better support young people as they prepare themselves for working life.

     [4] Schools may provide programmes of career development activities, particularly those that include workplace experience. Experience of the world of work challenges young people to understand what it means to be personally effective in different workplaces while providing a unique opportunity to develop social networks of value. Through exposure to the people who do different jobs, young people have the chance to challenge genderN and class-based stereotyping and expand their aspirations, easing ultimate entry into the labour market (see Box 2).

        [5] However, in recent years, analyses of career preparation have focused on the challenge of misalignment: where the educational plans of young people are out of kilter with their occupational expectations. When young people underestimate the education required to fulfil their dreams, they can expect to find their early working lives more difficult than would be expected. Of particular concern is that most young people whose aspirations are misaligned with their education come from disadvantaged backgrounds. Consequently, it is now clear that career guidance serves an important service in dealing with inequalities.

        [6] Results from PISA show that the career aspirations of young people are no simple reflection of teenage academic ability. Rather, they reflect complex lives. Analyses show that the children of more advantaged families are more likely to want to go on to university than working class kids. Similarly, career thinking is often determined by gender and immigrant background as well as socioeconomic status. Disadvantaged young people are at clear risk of career confusion. lt is neither fair, nor efficient, for students to move through education with limited views of both the amplitude of the labour market and their own potential.