Call for focus on jobs when teaching kids

Photo / APN

A more job-focussed approach to education is needed to tackle high youth unemployment, a New Zealand Institute report released today says.

More Ladders, Fewer Snakes examined how to address youth disadvantage in New Zealand.

"Unemployment, crime, health and safety, and teenage birth outcomes are all worse than outcomes for the OECD on average," the report said.

"Only in secondary education does New Zealand perform relatively well."

It said the estimated annual cost from youth unemployment, youth incarceration, youth on the sole parent benefit, including taxes forgone, was around $900 million.

Efforts to fix the problems had made little progress.

"Reducing youth unemployment is the most important opportunity to reduce youth disadvantage and that ensuring school engagement and improving the school-to-work transition should be important priorities," the report said.

"That would match with the observations that these two important drivers of youth outcomes are not currently working well and that they are not an important focus of existing improvement investment."

It recommended more e-learning at poorer schools and focussed efforts on getting students into work when they finish studying.

The report said e-learning - learning and teaching facilitated by or supported through the smart use of Information and Communications Technologies - meant students could learn at their own pace and learn valuable skills.

The report gave the example of a decile one school, Manaia View in south Whangarei, which had a 90 per cent Maori roll. The school implemented an e-learning programme and last year 89 per cent of year seven and year eight students performed at or above the level expected for their age in reading, and 71 per cent in writing. The corresponding figures for 2008 were 58 per cent and 32 per cent respectively.

"E-learning can reach everyone and improve outcomes for those already disadvantaged. Therefore it should be scaled urgently and systematically."

Schools would need resources to implement it.

The report found many young people left school but failed to find jobs.

Courses were offered that didn't lead to jobs and most educational institutions did not track what happened to their students when they graduated.

"There is no strong mechanism to match aggregate future workforce needs with educational or training capacity either."

Key recommendations included:

* An earlier focus on what jobs learning could lead to;

* Development of a national view of future workforce requirements and matching education capacity to meet that;

* More input from employers into education content and earlier links between education providers and potential employees;

* Better career guidance and transition support for students;

* Give a central agency, such as Careers NZ, responsibility for oversight of the careers advice system and framework, setting targets, ensuring provision of high quality advice to all students and monitoring and reporting outcomes;

* Require active career planning and tracking for all students, not simply those at risk or those who are headed for academic success.

"Most of the changes we propose involve refocusing existing capacity, capability and effort. An indicative costing indicates that the incremental per annum cost would be around $200 million, roughly 4 per cent of the current primary and secondary education budget."

- NZPA